a few millimetres or use the space for something else. The downside would be for any peripherals that are made exclusively for the iPhone and, by default, the iPad and most iPods, which also use Apple's proprietary 30-pin port. If you own any of these and upgrade your phone, it's not yet clear whether a simple adaptor could be fashioned to make it work again. Changing standards will also cause confusion among manufacturers of any dockable accessories, though in the future it could mean that new speaker docks, hi-fis and so on could feasibly dock to any Micro USB gadget, such as Android phones too, with remote control compatibility as well as audio-visual transfer functions. It won't be the first time Apple has introduced a change that makes some accessories incompatible. Although they use the same style of 30-pin connector, iPods dating back a few years do not have a digital audio output via this port, and therefore they don't work with all 'iPod-friendly' hi-fis and speaker docks. Will Apple go for a smaller proprietary socket or microUSB? Current-design microUSB ports use just five pins while the new iPhone one has nineteen. We know what our bet would be. Have your say in the comments. Name withheld Micro USB? Er, no. The extensive capabilities of the 30-pin connector are one of the major reasons why such a large accessory ecosystem has built up around iDevices. Many of those accessories would not have been possible if Apple had put a simple