The iPhone 15 family of devices was the first to have USB-C ports, but you really aren’t making the most of it if all you do is use yours to charge. Here’s what you can do, and what you can’t with external drives.
There are SSDs designed especially for use with iPhones.
The beauty of the USB-C port is that there are already countless devices and accessories out there that can plug into it. That’s the benefit of a “universal” port, after all.
In the case of your iPhone, being able to charge it using a friend’s cable is just the beginning. The real fun starts when you plug things like external storage into it.