Engineer Ken Pillonel has installed a working Lightning connector to a Samsung Galaxy A51, following a trend of hobbyists successfully swapping the iPhone's Lightning port for a USB-C port.
Pillonel made headlines for upgrading an iPhone X to include a working USB-C connector, which went on to sell for more than $86,000 at auction. His most recent attempt was to do the opposite and add a Lightning connector to a Galaxy A51, complete with charging and data transfer capabilities.
According to Pillonel, the project was "a difficult adjustment that required some out-of-the-box thinking."
Apple's Lightning cords are not "stupid." They are only capable of charging Apple devices. So I needed to find a technique to fool the cable into believing it was connected to an Apple device. And it all has to fit within the phone, which is a difficulty in and of itself.
Pillonel admits that "the completed product's quality is nothing like what it was for the iPhone," but he doesn't think "nobody in their right mind" would want to do this to their smartphone. "It was simply for fun; I just wanted to see if I could do it," he remarked, adding that such initiatives are a fantastic illustration of what can be accomplished with technology even without the assistance of corporations.
Pillonel intends to provide a full-length explanatory video regarding the Galaxy A51's USB-C to Lightning conversion to his YouTube channel shortly.
