'One port to rule them all' was a mistake. Instead of being convenient, USB C has become a confusing ordeal of varying capabilities and quality control. It is like we've gone back to having many different types of connectors, but it is even worse because they share the same form factor. For any of the devices that use USB C to charge, I only use the cable that came with it when I purchased it.
While I complain, I would also like to mention the USB forum's insane naming strategy and non-obvious labeling system. Remember when USB 3 was easily identifiable because of the blue plastic in the port?
>What we have now is so much better than what we used to have.
Agree. People are looking at the past with rose tinted glasses or haven't lived through the '90s - '00 tech. Every phone and electronic gadget had their own proprietary dock, cable and connector for data and charging. Even many phones had proprietary connectors for headphones instead of the 3.5mm jack. It was a nightmare.
You're phone is running out of battery while you're at the bar/on vacation? Then good luck finding someone with the same Motorola charger. Want to transfer your photos to your PC and your 50pin Sony Ericsson data cable is acting up? Good luck finding a cheap replacement on a short notice. Want to plug in the phone's memory card in your laptop instead? Well, if your laptop doesn't support Sony's proprietary Memory Stick Pro Duo, then you're shit out of luck.
And even those proprietary connectors had plenty of issues, and manufacturers weren't even consistent, changing their connectors every few years instead of sticking with one for the long run.
What we have today has certainly teething issues, but we're on the right path.
> You're phone is running out of battery while you're at the bar/on vacation? Then good luck finding someone with the same Motorola charger.
Curiously, many Nokia phones in the same generation seemed to use the same charger form factor, at least when I last checked.
Contrast this to me recently finding myself with an Android phone that has USB Type C and only a Nintendo Switch charger. I mean, it looks like it fits and both of them are the same form factor, right? So technically it should charge the phone, too. Except that it didn't (personal experience) and some online claimed that certain phone and charger combinations might cause them to (temporarily) stop working.
Ergo, instead of seeing that a Motorola charger won't work for my Nokia device, I was left wondering about whether it's even safe to share the charger given that the connectors do fit. Furthermore, I've seen cases where a USB cable actually doesn't carry data and can only be used for charging, with no clear/apparent indications of this, neither when buying it or when looking at it.
The world would be much simpler if one plug had one spec, with no deviations from it being permissible. If it fits, it should work.
Everywhere I could find a type-C plug, it always managed to charge my phone regardless which charger brand or dock was at the other end. I can go to any bar, airport or hotel on any continent and I know I'll find a type-C plug somewhere VS in the past when your Cingular phone had a connector which wasn't available in Europe because those phones weren't sold there. That's a real life saver which many people seem to ignore just because their Nintendo widget decided to not follow the spec.
>Contrast this to me recently finding myself with an Android phone that has USB Type C and only a Nintendo Switch charger
Nintendo violated the spec on the Switch either through malice, wanting to lock users into their own chargers, or through engineering incompetence by not being able to follow a spec which every other electronics brand could.
Nintendo is also known to be extremely anti-consumer.
So blame Nintendo not type-C.
Pretty sure when the Switch launched it's 15V 2.6A spec wasn't part of the PD standard. Not really any different from the myriad of phones out there with their own custom fast charging protocol like OnePlus. Mainly where they went out of spec was the dock side to make connecting that easier. The Switch charges fine with other chargers, running the dock is a bit trickier because of the 15V 2.6A requirement but some like the newer MacBook ones will do it.
That said I have several cheap devices that refuse to be charged/powered by a PD charger like an Apple charger. For instance the Neo Geo Mini, only likes basic 5V 1A chargers for some reason (I guess looking at the MB charger it doesn't support 5V 1A). If the charger doesn't support what the device wants it won't work. My phone happily will charge with what the Switch charger puts out.
>Pretty sure when the Switch launched it's 15V 2.6A spec wasn't part of the PD standard. Not really any different from the myriad of phones out there with their own custom fast charging protocol like OnePlus.
You missed my point entirely. The speed of the charging is not the issue here. It shouldn't matter what PD or fast charging protocol Nintendo or OnePlus would use, they should all be backwards compatible to legacy slow-charging and trickle charge from any type-C charger ever made, which is a lifesaver in an emergency and is why the type-C connector is a godsend.
Nintendo fucked up the pin-out on the connector making it completely non-standard and incompatible to any other type-C charger released. The speed of their charging protocol was not the issue.
The pinout is fine. You can charge a Switch with random adapters fine, powering docked mode is trickier because older PD adapters don't support it but newer ones do. The Switch adapter will happily charge my phone, tablet, eReader, etc and I have used it as my only charger on trips where I don't bring a laptop. Perhaps the problem here is OnePlus and whatever THEY do to get their fast charging spec?
Nintendo did more non-standard stuff with the dock port dimensions. Not so much pinouts. 3rd party docks fried Switches because of shit power management sending more voltage than the Switch needed.
EDIT: The problem seems to actually be that the Switch charger only supports 5V 1.5A whereas some phones require 2 or 3A and are not compatible.
My brother recently moved, and was taking his USB-C powered cable boxes back to the cable company. I thought the cable company wouldn’t care if the power adapters were missing.
The cable boxes’ USB-C power supplies do not charge my Sony USB-C camera. They’re on my stack of things I intended to look into one day, but haven’t gotten around to it yet.
Charging is one thing, but getting display out or Ethernet is at another level. After reading the link, I am still none the wiser on a situation I experienced recently. I have a Moto G6 phone. I bought a USB C dock for it, a "Kapok 11-in-1-USB-C Laptop Dockingstation Dual HDMI Hub" on Amazon. It would charge, but the video out didn't work, and the Ethernet didn't work either. Both did work for my Steam Deck, though. How come? I understand some USB C hubs work for Android phones, some don't, and I don't know how that works. How does one find a dock that will work with Android? That specific dock does mention compatibility with a bunch of Android devices; but not specifically Moto. But I know that the Moto G6 does support external display outputs and Ethernet connectivity - I just haven't found a device which allows those, yet.
That’s only “not a USB-C issue” if you fail to understand the central complaint about USB-C - that ports that support, say, video output (or input) are visually identical to ports that do not, and cables that can carry video are indistinguishable from those which only support USB 2, or those which only support charging at 15 W, or those that support charging at 100 W or or or. Thus the central question: is his phone failing to output video a failing of the phone? The dock? The cabling involved? Some combination of the above?
Everything looking the same with zero indication of what does what is the USB-C issue. The answer here might be “your phone doesn’t have that capability”, but the fact that you have to dive into the data sheets of everything involved including all of the cabling just to figure out what the hell the outcome is supposed to be versus the observed outcome is all completely absurd.
> Everything looking the same with zero indication of what does what is the USB-C issue. The answer here might be “your phone doesn’t have that capability”, but the fact that you have to dive into the data sheets of everything involved including all of the cabling just to figure out what the hell the outcome is supposed to be versus the observed outcome is all completely absurd.
That has always been the case - when phones had random 25 pin connectors some of them supported video out, some of them didn't, some of them let you connect and sync with your PC and some of them didn't. You couldn't tell by looking at them.
First off - my bad, I mentioned the Moto G6 above, but I actually have a G8 (the G6 was my previous phone). However, of course the same things apply.
> phones had random 25 pin connectors
Well, that's not exactly how things worked. Back when phones used feature connectors, you'd be searching for cables for the specific phone type. Video was... almost never a thing, but let's take a data cable instead like you mention, for using the phone as a modem. Or a firmware update cable. So you were searching for, say, a "Nokia 9210 Data / Firmware Cable". If you found one, you were mostly certain that it worked. There were mobile shops that specialized in this stuff. Every large city had at least one store with a firmware unlock service, and they could tell you the exact cable you needed for firmware, or for modem data. The best I can look for right now is an Android-compatible USB C Dock with HDMI output. Hard to tell if it's any good.
I still don't know how int_19h knows definitively that the phone doesn't support video output.
And then, what about Ethernet? I've tried a few different solutions: this specific dock, then a USB C to USB A converter with an ancient 10/100 interface that even works on the Wii U and has been in the Linux kernel for over a decade, and also using that interface plugged into the USB C dock.
And finally, I also tried some simple keyboards - both with that USB C dock, and with C-A converters. None of them worked. Why wouldn't basic USB functionality like keyboards not work? Has the Android kernel dropped support for such exotic devices as keyboards? It does support bluetooth keyboards; and it's not like the kernel is wanting for memory with 4GB of RAM, or whatever is left of it after all the spyware Android devices run whether I want them to or not.
Some cheap type-C devices lack some pull-up resistor to convince newer PD chargers (with type C output) to enable. So those devices only work on type-A output chargers.
Most phone can charge off of the base 5V/3A profile, so it works for phone.
But many bigger devices don't. I think most laptop only charge off of 20V mode, so it won't work if the charger can only do 5V or 9V. Some tablet also only do 9V, refusing to charge on 5V.
I was talking about phones benefiting from type-C standardization the most, as you'll always find a charger nearby. Moving to more power hungry devices like laptops is moving the goalposts. Of course they won't charge off basic 15W phone chargers when CPUs alone draw that much.
But phones and tablets will gladly charge off the more powerful laptop type-C chargers. So there's another benefit: the type-C charger of your most power hungry gadget will charge all your other devices.
> But phones and tablets will gladly charge off the more powerful laptop type-C chargers. So there's another benefit: the type-C charger of your most power hungry gadget will charge all your other devices.
maybe in an ideal world, but this is absolutely not guaranteed at all. Some chargers only support the profiles they need and don't support the lower-voltage standards in between. Even apple does this sometimes, in fact.
now of course the usb-c crowd is probably going "well apple needs to get its shit together!" but that's not an uncommon thing at all. Chargers are still designed for the specific device and don't necessarily support intermediate standards, just like motherboard ports end up being designed for specific use-cases and don't necessarily support the thing you're trying to do with them. Maybe that should have been a requirement, but it isn't, because USB-IF is shit and doesn't care about the consumer.
fully implementing the usb-c standard, to all its extremes and nuances, is expensive as fuck, and this is a cost-driven market so you can bet your bottom dollar someone is going to choose to swiss-cheese the standard and their charger will be $2 cheaper so that'll be the one you buy. Or else you're paying more for Anker and Apple stuff (whoops, maybe not apple for chargers, but their cables are still the best!).
and yes, it should always work at the lowest-common-denominator standard, and there should be a profile for the base USB 5v 1A if nothing else but... not all devices do. Laptops often don't support lowest-common-denominator charging, for example.
Just like Apple. Just like Switch. etc etc. At some point it stops being a problem with specific vendors and starts being just a badly designed standard. USB-C is trying to have its cake and eat it too - they want to be in devices for which $1 for a port or a controller chip is a big expense, but also scale to 40V/100W charging and 80gbps full-duplex data (with a 40gbps video channel and a 40gbps pcie link) and have everything "just work", and that's not really physically possible to implement in devices where every nickel counts.
Maybe there should have been some defined "mobile" and "laptop/desktop" profiles, that overlapped in some defined ways, so this wouldn't have been a problem. Your mobile standard can be cost-optimized, your laptop standard can be full-featured, both of them have some lowest-common-denomiantor requirements. Laptop 2.0 always supports everything Laptop 1.0 did, and Phone 3.0 always supports everything Phone 2.0 and 1.0 did.
But that's how USB-IF rolls, no need for nuance or delineation, just throw everything in one standard and let customers flounder. They do it on purpose, and people still defend them and love the product regardless, it's as mindless as people constantly (including here, ctrl-f any apple thread and search ‘mindless’ or ‘fanboy’) accuse apple fandoms of being. It's a bad standard and it's really just that simple, they could and should have done better and should not retain a government monopoly going forward, or else this will only continue to get more convoluted and complicated. Like we literally just got USB 4 2.0 and all, the leopard isn't changing its spots at this point.
But like, this was an eminently foreseeable outcome of the “one cable for everything” pipe dream people are pushing. Either cables/devices are expensive (thunderbolt), or each device supports some subset of the standard and end up with a confusing mess. But the “one cable for everything” fandom is insatiable.
Just one more profile bro. It’s gonna fix everything, I swear. One more standard and two more extensions. It’s gonna support PCIe 5.0 and DisplayPort 2.1 and it’ll charge your weedwhacker, just one more profile bro, please bro, I need this.
>Some chargers only support the profiles they need and don't support the lower-voltage standards in between
Yeah we don't live in an ideal world. But this has been a low enough encounter for me (actually never so far) to not overshadow the masive advantages type-C standardization has brought into my life. The fact that my phone and gadgets can all charge from the same plug that's now obliquus everywhere in the world is a godsend that people love to overlook every time they want to shit on the type-C standard because Nintendo screwed up.
>But that's how USB-IF rolls, no need for nuance or delineation, just throw everything in one standard and let customers flounder.
Do you have a better solution? Were the older days of millions of constantly changing cables and ports from every phone and gadget manufacturer better? I feel not. And what we have today, while far from perfects is miles better that the past.
Even with standard connectors like the 3.5mm jack there were tons of variations, some had a mic input, some had input for buttons, some could even charge through them, etc. and not every cable could do basic audio reliably if it was cheap/poorly manufactured. Things weren't perfect back then either.
>Just one more profile bro. It’s gonna fix everything, I swear. One more standard and two more extensions. It’s gonna support PCIe 5.0 and DisplayPort 2.1 and it’ll charge your weedwhacker, just one more profile bro, please bro, I need this.
Extra profiles are not there to fix things, they're there to extend the functionality of the type-C connector, which is what the end-game is. Yeah, extra profiles won't work if you don't have the right cable, which could be confusing for the consumer, but let's not halt technological progress in the right direction by constantly making perfect the enemy of good.
I love, and I think everyone else will agree, that now we have a single cable coming into the laptop instead of a huge octopus spaghetti monster from every port that needs to be plugged and unplugged individually for every peripheral every time you want to leave your desk. I'm sure there will be people who prefer the octopus spaghetti monster, but I don't want to go back to those days, so the disadvantages of the move to type-C are massively overshadowed by the advantages.
> Were the older days of millions of constantly changing cables and ports from every phone and gadget manufacturer better? I feel not. And what we have today, while far from perfects is miles better that the past.
Better in some ways? Yes. Not better in other ways? Also yes.
Where someone stands on the spectrum depends on how you feel about uncertainty. That is, previously you were certain about what did work (i.e., the cord + charger that came with your phone) vs what did not.
Now, there's more compatibility yet at the same time we've taken on uncertainty.
I generally feel we're better off. But there are also enough times where I think, "Sure, maybe jetpacks was too much to expect two decades into the 21st Century, but connector + cable being a no-brainer isn't. FFS why do I have to think so much about something that should be so simple?"
Yes, I literally said it in my post: instead of a "profile" being "20V@2A" it should be "laptop 2.0" and laptop 2.0 includes a mandatory selection of power/data/video capabilities, with 3.0 being a strict superset of 2.0 capabilities. You can always add more capabilities, if you have 3.0 data but only 2.0 charging, that's fine, but, you have to advertise that as 2.0.
Desktop/laptop ports are required to carry video and pcie, mobile standards don't have to... or maybe higher versions of the standard should start requiring it.
If that means motherboard makers have to start advertising that their ports only support the "mobile" connectivity levels because they didn't want to put video/pcie on the port... tough, that's information the consumers need to know.
> Even with standard connectors like the 3.5mm jack there were tons of variations, some had a mic input, some had input for buttons, some could even charge through them, etc. and not every cable could do basic audio reliably if it was cheap/poorly manufactured. Things weren't perfect back then either.
3.5mm headset (headphone+mic) connectors were the closest thing I've ever seen to a bulletproof connector apart from VERY niche things like low-impedence headphones that required an amp. Not sure that's a good example either. I guess there's line level, but, go to best buy and pick a random device (any device) with a headphone port and a random pair of headphones and they work 100% of the time, guaranteed, I'll bet you money on this right now at my local best buy.
Ethernet? Displayport? Both of those pretty much negotiate seamlessly down to whatever capability they both support.
You can't make ethernet "optional" stuff, because ethernet does exactly one thing and it either works or it doesn't. My home network just works - go to best buy and pick a random switch and a random ethernet device and it works 100% of the time, and I'll bet you money on that too. Even things like crossover ports are dead now, the only real thing that matters even to nerds is stuff like MTU size that also transparently work unless you actively fuck with the settings.
It's really only USB-C that has turned into a trainwreck and it's specifically because USB-IF doesn't define meaningful profiles and just makes everything an optional feature, and since "it can do everything" that means most things don't do anything more than the bare minimum.
> Extra profiles are not there to fix things, they're there to extend the functionality of the type-C connector, which is what the end-game is.
Well, if you use profiles in that manner, don't be surprised when people are confused by your connector that has 57 different profiles and nothing supports anything.
Again: why can't a profile be "laptop 2.0" and my laptop supports that? Why do I have to know that my laptop needs the 40V/2.5A profile to charge and that I need X charger and Y cable?
That's purely down to USB-IF mismanagement and corruption. They should not have a government monopoly, they're working for the vendors, not for you.
That's what Intel did with Thunderbolt (4?) specification: you either support all of things listed there, or you can't call yourself Thunderbolt-compatible.
Yup. And I think that's the dichotomy: "supports everything on everything" or "cable doesn't cost $60 and goes farther than 2 meters", take your pick.
Expense was pretty much a foregone conclusion at the start of the thunderbolt "one cable for everything" experiment, and now people want to do that with usb in general. Sure, that'll be great, but it's going to be expensive, including in places that don't need those capabilities. If you allow deviations from the standard, then you are back to things being incompatible with various devices/cables/chargers. They allowed that with power profiles (in particular) and video capabilities and now it's a mess.
Framing profiles in terms of device use-cases is my attempt at turning that soup back into something comprehensible for average consumers, while keeping the benefit. People approach this as "I want to plug my phone into the charger and have it just work", "I want to plug my dock into my laptop and do everything through one cable", etc, and those are actually use-cases and not feature profiles, they don't really care that the laptop needs 40V 2.5A or 25V 3A, they just want it to work. But of course a $10 vape pen (or phone) doesn't need 40V 2.5A charging. So you have a "phone profile" and a "laptop profile" and iterate those things as groups/featuresets and not as a bunch of profiles thrown into one enormous standard.
You can retain most of the "universal standard" juice without squeezing too hard on the "$60 cable" expense side of things. You could have one cable for laptop docks and one cable for phone charging and have a lot of overlap between, but still not have to use a $60 cable to charge your phone just because that's what a laptop needs, and yet not have a confusing free-for-all of "this charger doesn't do that".
I'm just a rando though so it's not like I have any say.
> go to best buy and pick a random device (any device) with a headphone port and a random pair of headphones and they work 100% of the time, guaranteed, I'll bet you money on this right now at my local best buy.
Sure, maybe the audio will work, maybe it will have static cause they're cheap since the manufacturer cut corners to save $.01. But does the mic on them work with my device? Or the buttons on them, will they work controlling the volume? IIRC, wired 3.5mm headphones had separate versions for iPhone and Android as the buttons on them worked different on each platform. So making 3.5mm an example of successful standardization across all platforms is laughable IMHO.
>it should be "laptop 2.0" and laptop 2.0 includes a mandatory selection of power/data/video capabilities, with 3.0 being a strict superset of 2.0 capabilities.
What if for me as a consumer, or me as a manufacturer, don't need the full Laptop 3.0 capabilities in my ideal product, and my product just needs Laptop 2.0 capabilities with only a couple of Laptop 3.0 functionality to make me happy? Why make a needlessly more expensive product with features the target customers don't need, by having such coarse and inflexible standardization with little room for movement?
It might not matter for a $2k Macbook where you could throw the kitchen sink in there, but for a $200 phone or a $500 laptop, it does. both in terms of cost and size.
Yeah, the type-C flexibility is both a blessing and a curse.
>What if for me as a consumer, or me as a manufacturer, don't need the full Laptop 3.0 capabilities in my ideal product, and my product just needs Laptop 2.0 capabilities with only a couple of Laptop 3.0 functionality to make me happy?
Too bad you get it anyway? I don’t see why this is an issue. I already cannot buy a laptop that has exactly what I need. I’m sure that many people are in the same boat. You already make compromises and spend money on things you don’t want to get things that are a priority. And we spend far more money doing so already than the cost of a USBC controller.
At least this way I know exactly what I’m getting.
> What if for me as a consumer, or me as a manufacturer, don't need the full Laptop 3.0 capabilities in my ideal product, and my product just needs Laptop 2.0 capabilities with only a couple of Laptop 3.0 functionality to make me happy?
I think the confusion, expense, and e-waste from having 57 different profiles is worse than a hypothetical about some new class of device that demands drastically different capability sets from the existing ones. The answer is... USB-IF should define Laptop 2.0 such that that doesn't happen, and if there is some drastically new class of device that merits a new profile, we make VR Headset 1.0 or whatever. If there's some new USB 5.0 standard that everyone is going to want... then we release a new Laptop 3.0 standard with that included.
and if you are making a netbook or something that doesn't need super-powered 100W charging then... market it as Laptop 1.0? what exactly is the problem?
It's a hypothetical edge case that is completely and trivially solvable if it ever comes up, and doesn't merit throwing away the whole USB-C standardization idea.
> Why make a needlessly more expensive product with features the target customers don't need, by having such coarse and inflexible standardization with little room for movement?
because that's the whole point of USB-C, to eliminate redundant cables and move towards standardized devices/chargers, and the entire point is lost if you allow vendors to play silly buggers with current/voltage profiles.
Like, basically what you're saying here is you don't like the idea of USB-C at all and want a more granular set of capabilities. That would be great! Just have one standard that covers audio, and another one or two that cover video? We could hypothetically give them all different cables, so no device has to use any cable that's any more expensive than it must be, and give them all different connectors so there's no consumer confusion about what plugs into what, right? Sounds good to me.
The harm from "device profiles" is... manufacturers would have to market that device as "Laptop 2.0" or "Laptop 2.0 With 40gbps Data" or whatever the extension ends up being. Laptop 2.5, if you will. Having to be more specific in advertising is much much better than allowing massive consumer confusion and e-waste due to incompatible chargers/cables/etc.
Even if there end up being a lot of "Laptop 2.5" devices, there is a huge value-add from having that "Laptop 2.0" standard - we eliminate an entire class of "my charger works with 40V 1A but not 25V 3A" problems, because the laptop needs to support at least laptop 2.0 to be advertised as laptop 2.0, it's a guarantee that it works at least that far. Same for chargers/cables/etc - it's a fixed target for them to work against, whereas right now with 57 different profiles it's a free-for-all.
The problem of course being - USB-IF will never do any of this of their own volition. They work for the OEMs, not for you.
> What if for me as a consumer, or me as a manufacturer, don't need the full Laptop 3.0 capabilities in my ideal product, and my product just needs Laptop 2.0 capabilities with only a couple of Laptop 3.0 functionality to make me happy? Why make a needlessly more expensive product with features the target customers don't need, by having such coarse and inflexible standardization with little room for movement?
> It might not matter for a $2k Macbook where you could throw the kitchen sink in there, but for a $200 phone or a $500 laptop, it does. both in terms of cost and size.
You seem to be trying to have it both ways here: isn't this precisely the concern leveled against having multiple different connectors? The counterargument is that having one cable/charger for everything eliminates a huge amount of waste and redundancy, even if it's significantly more expensive to implement fully. Each cable may be more expensive - but you don't need 5 different cables, because you plug into your dock with one cable and you get video/pcie/data.
Having Desktop/Laptop and Phone profiles is the same USB-C concept taken further: instead of allowing manufacturers to still do inane shit with voltage/current profiles and video/pcie capabilities that render various cables/devices incompatible despite physically plugging, we say "if you want to advertise a 'laptop' standard connector, it must support at least this set of capabilities". And we pick some reasonable sets of capabilities, whatever those end up being. If you want to go further, fine, if you need a new class of profile defined, fine, but most devices will fit into those bins and we will define new bins if necessary.
If you want to reduce cost for devices that don't need the full set of capabilities on every single port, then stop trying to shoehorn USB-C into everything and let me have a physical displayport and a 3.5mm headset. Done. If you're going to force this USB-C shit on me, it needs to be consumer-friendly enough that you don't need a PHD to determine whether your laptop charger will work right with your tablet.
Nobody wants to go back to every phone having a different connector, but, that's not really going to happen at this point.
You're drawing a huge amount of strawmen by cherry-picking niche scenarios of "wrong cable to wrong product" incompatibilities and promoting that as being the norm for everyone using usb-C everywhere, as an argument of why usb-C sucks. Sure, there are cases where this may happen and it sucks, but realistically, that's not been the case for me so far since 2016 when I made the switch and you're ignoring the massive amount of compatibility that already exists and also works just fine for everyone else, including in our office where we have a mix of Dell and Lenovo laptops and docks plus 3 brands of android phones.
You're also ignoring the huge amount of e-waste prevented by having a single charring conector for all phones for the last few years allowing you to reuse older chargers on new phones across different brands and even different devices, albite at lower speeds sometimes, depending on fast-charging standard used. But still, in an emergency, I'd rather be able to charge my dying phone slower using the bartender's charger than not being able to do that at all because he's phone has one of the other 12 charging connectors we used to have. This standardization has been a huge win for consumers and the environment despite the issues from having 57 profiles which are mostly in the PC/laptop space.
Yeah it's far from perfect today, and it could be better, and hopefully things will improve with time, but standardization will always be a long and hard battle when you have so many parties with different interests and ideas, and still, compared to what we had in the past, I'd rather take this route instead of scraping all this progress by letting perfect be the enemy of good.
There's already people on this thread using the solution of ditching the cable that came with your device and replacing everything with known high quality cables.
> maybe in an ideal world, but this is absolutely not guaranteed at all. Some chargers only support the profiles they need and don't support the lower-voltage standards in between. Even apple does this sometimes, in fact.
Apple chargers follow the USB PD 2/3 spec which doesn’t include a 12v profile, which appeared in the original PD 1 spec. There’s good technical reasons for swapping the 12v profile for the the 15v profile, as 15v is far more useful for actually charging devices, but the rug pull spec change is certainly a pain in the arse.
Good third party PD chargers will support all historical USB PD profiles, and Programable Power Supply (PPS), which allows a device to request any arbitrary voltage. But many first party charges seem to strictly implement only PD 2/3 with PPS occasionally.
The USB forum have really messed up the labelling of these specs, but manufacturers like Apple are making perfectly compliant PD chargers, and implement everything USB PD 2/3 requires.
> and yes, it should always work at the lowest-common-denominator standard, and there should be a profile for the base USB 5v 1A if nothing else but... not all devices do.
Every USB charger does support 5v 1A. That’s what you get from a USB port before you start the USB PD handshake. The resistors on the USB-C CC pin indicate passively what the port will provide without a full PD negotiation.
> Laptops often don't support lowest-common-denominator charging, for example.
Of course laptops don’t support 5v 1A charging. It’s a complete waste of time. By the time the laptops power control electronics have finished converting into a useful voltage for internal power rails, you’ll have used up most of the 5W of power provided, and turned it into heat. There’s practically nothing useful a laptop can do with a 5v 1A supply. It’s not a meaningful amount of power, and it’s not a voltage that can be efficiently utilised for anything a laptop needs.
USB-C and its associated standards are still in their infancy. For all its problems today, USB-C provides an excellence technical base, over the next decade we’ll see rapid convergence on a standard set of charging features and data features that will be implemented at scale with dirt cheap dedicated silicon. That final feature set will be far beyond anything we’ve had before, but we’re ultimately waiting for the standards to stabilise enough that the IC needed to implement the really useful features can become cheap and common.
I thought every USB port supported basic USB charging, but aren't there chargers with permanently attached cables that only support higher voltages? I believe the Nintendo Switch charger is like this?
> Everywhere I could find a type-C plug, it always managed to charge my phone regardless which charger brand or dock was at the other end.
Here it definitely doesn't. I have at least 4/5 cables / usb-c ports combos in my home which aren't able to perform this apparently basic feature ; the phone's charging icon will activate but it will still loose battery
> Here it definitely doesn't. I have at least 4/5 cables / usb-c ports combos in my home which aren't able to perform this apparently basic feature ; the phone's charging icon will activate but it will still loose battery
Just out of curiosity, will the device charge if you
1. Let the device drain mostly if not fully
2. Start charging
3. Turn off the device
4. Continue charging with the device continued in a turned off state
5. ... wait (this might take a day or a week)
6. Check if the battery managed to fully charge
That is, I am wondering if there is some shenanigan in that the device somehow refuses to be slow charged. I have never heard of it but if that is happening, I would like to learn more.
Yeah, that’s the problem you can’t tell if something will work unless you try. And then you still have to worry about if it’s the cable or the charger. This is a huge step backwards.
hot take but I solve this by not buying any usb-c cable that isn't 100W compatible lol. I have some "full spec" cables that do video, and many more that are just charge-only/usb 2.0, but everything is 100W capable. Charge cables get marked with some nail polish on the connector body when I take them out of the package.
The "fasgear" brand on amazon have worked well for me and they actually have 3-meter cables that do full 100w charging, right angle connectors for laptops/etc, and they have a usb 4-compatible lineup (that I have not tried). A 2m charge cable is $7 a pop and 3m is $11 (they run coupons on both frequently that take it down another 10% or so) but whatever, that's just kinda what it costs to not have to worry about it.
cables that come with things go into a baggie in The Bin Of Solitude where they shall remain untouched until my descendents clean them out after I pass. "But what if I really really need a low-spec charge cable at some hypothetical point in the future!?!? you never know when it'll be 2012 again, buddy."
gonna suck when 140W or whatever comes out and my cables won't do it but... I guess they'll still work at 100W. Hopefully. I guess it's not guaranteed either, thanks USB-IF.
No downside I hadn’t expected is that because of all the extreme back compatibility you could have a TB4 drive and TB4 host but accidentally use a cable that only supports USB 1/2. It would work, just at very low speed, and an unsophisticated user would simply suffer, not knowing how to diagnose the problem.
It's really not. I've got a Dell USB-C charger that continually drops out when I try to charge a Lenovo laptop with it, and a USB-C hub with power passthrough that won't at all charge two laptops out of three with USB-C. My laptop's charger causes my phone to overheat. When I plug my laptop in to my phone's rapid-charger, it sometimes trickle-charges and sometimes does nothing.
Basically, I have to carefully choose chargers for devices and can't just use any of the USB-C chargers available. Throughout this thread, there's people pointing out similar cases.
>I've got a Dell USB-C charger that continually drops out when I try to charge a Lenovo laptop with it
Interesting, we have various Dell and Lenovo type-C and thunderbolt docks at work and they can each cross charge the Lenovo and the Dell laptops we have.
> My laptop's charger causes my phone to overheat.
The charger which came with your phone probably doesn't output enough power to charge your phone at its maximum speed, while your laptop's charger has more than enough power for that. But what decides at which speeds to charge is actually your phone's built-in charger (what we are calling a "charger" is actually a power supply, the true charging circuit is always within the phone itself). So if your phone is overheating, either it's just hotter than you expected but still within its design parameters, or your phone charging circuit was badly designed.
> When I plug my laptop in to my phone's rapid-charger, it sometimes trickle-charges and sometimes does nothing.
Even funnier than that: when I plug my phone into my laptop using a USB-C to USB-C cable (because the phone's battery is low and the power is out), the phone tries to charge the laptop; I have to go to the USB control in the phone's notification area and tell it to do the opposite.
Then it seems to me like they should have chosen a different connector, maybe even be encouraged by some entity to do so, as to not cause undue confusion or frustration.
> Agree. People are looking at the past with rose tinted glasses or haven't lived through the '90s - '00 tech. Every phone and electronic gadget had their own proprietary dock, cable and connector for data and charging. Even many phones had proprietary connectors for headphones instead of the 3.5mm jack. It was a nightmare.
You've missed the problematic point of where we are now. In the mid 2010's, apple had lightning, and android was almost certainly micro USB. If I had a USB port, and a cable that fit, it would charge my phone effectively. Somewhere in the transition to USB-C ,we lost that.
> What we have today has certainly teething issues, but we're on the right path.
I disagree - we've missed the forest for the trees. I have 4 mains to USB adapters in my home, and 2 USB-A plug sockets. I also have 4 USB C-C cables, and 2 A-C cables (which stay in the wall sockets). I use these to power 2 phones, 2 pairs of earbuds, an M1 Macbook and and iPad. If you pick an arbitrary cable and an arbitrary power adapter and plug it into a device that fits, it will do anything ranging from not work at all (with my anker wall charger and any cable into both sets of earbuds), up to charging it so quickly the device oveheats (140w USB c charger into either phone). I've got 6 devices, 4 cables, and 4 plugs that all have the same connection points that just don't work properly together. Meanwhile if you go back to the mid 2010's as per earlier, we had a lightning cable and a micro USB cable - you knew it worked if it fit.
That's before you get into the nonsense around Android auto. I have a car with AA in it's head unit, and a USB port for connectivity. I must ahve tried 5 different branded cables before I found a reddit post that linked a specific anker cable that works for my very specific combination of car and device - I _never_ would have figured that out on my own.
> up to charging it so quickly the device oveheats (140w USB c charger into either phone)
That isn't how USB-PD works / a problem with USB itself, The device being charged controls the rate of charge: Sinks (in this case, your phone) request a voltage and current from the source, going off of a list of what the source reports that it supports. If the phone can only support say 10W charging it's going to request 10W of power regardless of how oversized the charger is.
those sorts of fast-charge speeds are incredibly bad for the battery regardless of whether the device will let it do it - I think this is something the EU should step in and regulate tbh, because that's a huge vector for e-waste. At best you're changing the battery much more frequently, which is still e-waste, and often those devices are ending up in the trash because apple is the only vendor with a serious battery-replacement programme. third-party batteries are uniformly trash.
set a maximum of a 1 hour charge speed and pop up a notification that allows the user to manually elect to supercharge the battery faster, imo. it shouldn't be an automatic "the charger supports it, imma nuke the battery", that just sounds like vendors speeding up the pace of planned obsolescence.
people always complain about this with wireless, that the heat from a 5W wireless charger is somehow damaging the battery and causing e-waste as a result, and yet you've got vendors who are bragging about how they're zapping a phone battery with a 140W charger to get a third of a charge in 5 minutes or whatever, that's terrible as a general practice.
Apple gets this right. When I plug in my iPhone at night, regardless of the PD of the source it's connected to - it informs me that it's doing "Optimized Battery Charging" and will be fully charged by my wake up time. It slurps up whatever it can get if I plug in my phone any other time of the day - if I plug in my phone at 11% at 1pm, it probably means I missed my nightly charging cycle and I do really need the fast charge.
Would you please stop breaking the site guidelines? You've done it at least twice in this thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32717674 is the other one I saw). We ban accounts that post like this, and we've had to warn you about this repeatedly already:
Continuing like this will get you banned. I don't want to ban you, because you've also posted good things. Therefore if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
I've worked with batteries for decades across various chemistries and yes, fast charging definitely does decrease the battery life. Maybe it's changed in the meantime, but your post isn't appropriate for this community.
Specifically, process improvements means that modern batteries aren't prone to dendrite formation under high rates of charge. Good thing too, because electric cars wouldn't be practical otherwise.
>You've missed the problematic point of where we are now.
I don't think I missed anything on the phone charging part, I think you're looking at other issues.
>If I had a USB port, and a cable that fit, it would charge my phone effectively. Somewhere in the transition to USB-C ,we lost that.
I don't know what you think we lost, but every type-C plug I could find in any household or office, always
managed to charge my Android phone, just like micro-B before that.
> I don't know what you think we lost, but every type-C plug I could find in any household or office, always managed to charge my Android phone, just like micro-B before that.
if I show you a photo of two USB chargers, can you tell me which one will provide 5w to my phone and which will provide 15w?
Why do the two ports on my 45w USB adapter provide different wattages with no visible difference to them?
Why does my macbook have the same ports as my phone and iPad but not charge from them when using the almost identical charger to the one I'm supposed to use with it?
Why does my PS5 controller only charge to 2 out of 3 bars when using any/all of the adapters above?
> I think you're looking at other issues.
There are enough issues with where we've gotten to that didn't exist 5 years ago for me to be confident in saying we're going in the wrong direction. We've standardised _cables_, but the important part is the protocols, not the cable. I _want_ different cables for different protocols .
The output tends to be written on the USB charger, and beyond that lots of places label "power delivery" on special ports as well. You might have bought a badly designed USB adapter that doesn't label that, but that at least is fixable (hell, by you with a sticker!)
And of course you can choose to charge your macbook with an iPad charger, but (surprise I guess?) you won't get a lot of power because the thing is rated for lower rates.
But if we compare to the past.... everything USB-like was charging at 5W. I don't think you will find any USB-C cable + charger that doesn't do that. So things are _by definition_ not worse for that.
For your laptop.... you used to have a proprietary connector or a barrel connector. Now you have a USB-C connector. Now granted, the confusion around the cables and chargers is true! So... put a sticker on it. You now have a proprietary connector again, and things are the same as before.
You can pretend to be in the good old days, and have the nice surprise of added benefits when you need to be. This is a _mathematical proof_ that things are better if you use some colored tape.
PS: since you're only mentioning charging.... we did standardise the charging protocols. The cables are the same and the charging protocols are the same. Just if you buy a weaker charger it will output less.
>if I show you a photo of two USB chargers, can you tell me which one will provide 5w to my phone and which will provide 15w
Why? Did you also care about that with micro-B on Android? Or when using different wattage lightning chargers from Apple?
It's up to you to read the wattage on them an decide which one you want to use. Mobile tech has gotten more powerful and so have the chargers.
It's your responsibility to keep track of the chargers in your household, but the great part is, even if you don't and mix them up, they'll both charge your phone either way, just ar different speeds, and most likely any other low power type-C gadget in your household like your earbuds. You can't expect us to go back to having different plugs for different wattages just because you can't keep track of the different chargers you own. Devices and chargers are smart and they'll negociate the quickest and safest charging wattage regardless.
Since you're being obviously obtuse just to be snarky, I'll stop answering your questions as i think i provided enough arguments so far.
> If I had a USB port, and a cable that fit, it would charge my phone effectively. Somewhere in the transition to USB-C ,we lost that.
Nonsense. Your phone is not trying to pull 50W, any correctly implemented type C cable will do.
The complexity of Type C is for things you were not able to do at all: high-power applications (>40W) and / or high data rates over a single cable.
I've a single cable which charges my laptops, connects all the devices plugged into the display, and carries video to two different displays.
That does require a cable with somewhat high specs, and it's unfortunate that labelling isn't the clearest and unsuitable cables are difficult to diagnose, but before this was only an option via bespoke proprietary docks. Now it's just a standard cable.
I regularly charge my headphones off my laptop's 90W USB-C adapter. If your device overheats while charging it's not the fault of the charger it's a fault of the device. Don't buy crappy devices that will immolate themselves.
> Don't buy crappy devices that will immolate themselves.
It's the consumers fault that manufacturers don't follow the spec. It's my fault that Sony PS5 controllers only charge 2/3 of the way when not using the console as a power source, or the nintendo switch doesn't conform to the spec despite using the same adapters, or that my samsung buds aren't charging when I use an anker cable.
I have no idea about the PS5 controllers. I've never owned a PlayStation. I'd love to have more info on that, a quick search didn't yield me much information other than generic hardware issues people had. My Switch pro controller charges fine with 3rd party USB chargers, I've used several different ones and different cables without issue.
As for the Switch, it's somewhat sensitive to out of spec chargers and cables but if it's a proper cable or charger it shouldn't damage it. Most of the concerns were from 3rd party docks when it first came out which weren't really to spec. It would be nice if it wasn't so sensitive, but if you use good hardware you won't have issues.
I've got a regular Switch which has all the original hardware. I often use my laptop's 90W adapter to charge it when traveling. I have not experienced any issues in multiple years of doing so.
I guess I should add to that and say don't buy crappy devices that will immolate themselves or be out of spec so much they damage other components.
Charging is one aspect. People are bricking their devices today because everyone loves the center-positive barrel connector. It's used for everything from 3.3V to 48V (and maybe even more than that). Plug your 5V device into a 12V supply, rest in peace, device. The shared form factor is nice, though, when you do carefully compare the voltage markings. I have a drawer of random 12V power supplies, and I have no idea if any of my devices are actually using the 12V power supply they came with, and it all works.
Meanwhile, the varying form factor for computer parts has never really been a problem. Back in the day, nobody ever tried to connect their VGA monitor to their PS/2 mouse port. But now, thanks to USB-C, many people try that, only to have it fail. They might have to get a new computer or monitor to salvage even one of them, but in the past, it was pretty easy to get something to work. (Still not perfect, of course. You still had to have a graphics card that could drive the monitor at the timings you desired, and sometimes the optimal timings for the monitor weren't achievable with your particular video output. This problem, of course, still affects HDMI, DVI, DisplayPort, and Thunderbolt.) Meanwhile, the ports that were the same caused a lot of confusion. How come you couldn't connect your PS/2 keyboard to the mouse port?
All in all, I think Type C is kryptonite for today's economy. Consumers only look at one spec when purchasing peripherals -- the price. To make the lowest price USB type C cable, you simply remove any copper from it that isn't related to charging a phone. That means you end up with people that want to use displayport alt mode, or data transfer, and can't, and have no ability whatsoever to fix the problem themselves.
None of this precludes a standard that lets you charge your phone, but it's complicated when you want to use one port to charge your phone, your laptop, your desktop, your monitor, share data, stream video, etc. and USB didn't get this one right. Of course, the industry did even worse without a standard, but it's still terrible.
It’s funny that we went through that but now have 4 different EV plugs that are standard and widely deployed:
- Tesla (AFAIK cannot be adapted to charge a SAE J1772 car)
- SAE J1772 (what my car, a PHEV has)
- CCS (I think this adaptable to J1772 but the chargers I’ve seen around the Bay Area are DC-only so these are useless even if mechanically adapted for my J1772 car)
- CHAdeMO - DC Only
If we keep going like this, with proprietary charging networks, incompatible plugs, and holiday weekends in California where the official guidance is to not charge your EV, it’s very difficult for me to be optimistic about the future of EVs. We probably need a trillion dollars worth of infra to fix the grid, chargers, and roads to really make this good, but I do not see that happening in my lifetime (mid 30s).
FWIW with the Tesla charging stations, they've talked before about opening it up to other cars, and I can see that happening eventually. The problem right now is that, the existence of those proprietary charging locations is part of their competitive advantage. It sucks, and it would probably be better to live in a world where there were separate charging companies and car companies, but the investment in bothering to build out the charge network is coming from Tesla specifically because they want to get people to buy a fleet of cars, and that chicken-and-egg issue isn't sure to work out correctly if their investment were able to be quickly piggy-backed by other car manufacturers who waited until Tesla built out the high-capacity charging locations to bother putting out a car. When the Tesla charging network isn't so much of a competitive advantage, it will likely open up (per my earlier comment that they've actually mentioned this recently).
None of this, of course, applies to laptop companies with their bullshit barrel chargers.
Exactly. I don't want to go back to computers with 10 different types of ports. Everything moving to USB-C is just fantastic.
It does suck that there are necessarily so many cable types (basically boiling down to no/low/hi data x no/lo/hi power) with no obvious good labeling system except for reading specs on a box.
But it's also not an issue for most people since most devices come with their own cable. My laptop came with an appropriate expensive USB-C power delivery cord, my USB lamp came with a cheapo one, my expensive monitor came with an appropriate expensive high-data Thunderbolt cable. And the manufacturers usually sell or recommend the appropriate longer length cable if you need that.
The issues only arise when you're trying to do more complicated things like use a USB hub, or run extremely long distances. The fact that USB hubs work at all still often seems like a minor miracle to me...
Easy -- that my laptop or desktop just has 2-4 thin, high-quality USB-C ports that I can plug anything into.
I can plug 2 devices in of the same type, without worrying about there being only 1 port of that type. I don't have to hunt for which port is where. I don't have to worry that this one model of laptop is missing that one type of port because there's only space for 7 on the side with the ports.
So long as you take some effort to ensure that your charger and your cables are both compliant and full-featured, you can then use them across all your USB-C devices, which is extremely handy esp. when travelling.
even if you could, what is the value-add of all the ports being usb-c to begin with?
what is my printer going to do with a displayport and pcie channel? obviously it doesn't need to implement those, but, it worked just fine with a USB Type-A 10gbps connector, what is the value-add of pushing that to USB-C at all?
So now I just need to remember which random cord came with each device and if I somehow get confused just buy the most expensive cord that I can find in hopes it supports all the different things?
I don't know about you, but I keep my cables with my devices, often they just stay plugged in.
My monitor cord stays attached to my monitor. My external hard drive cable stays attached to that. My phone charger cord stays attached to my phone charger. Etc.
Sure I have some extra old USB cables lying around from old devices where I tossed the device and kept the cord just in case... but generally speaking random cords isn't really a problem.
Seems like it's really easy to diagnose - problem with comms over a cable? 1/ is it seated correctly, 2/ are there any obvious defects, 3/ are the specs of the cable and the ports aligned?
Having incompatible ports means 3/ disappears but since many cables support multiple specs, it's nice to often have a win when connecting two devices over a cable rather than simply being blocked because the connector isn't compatible physically.
There are actually dedicated detector for detecting charger compatibility or faulty cable. And they are surprisingly not that expensive (rage from 20 to 40 usd depends on spec and vendor).
Something like, test the cable and get a resistance of 0.6Ω ? Let's just toss it away. This will definitely fail the usb protocol and stop devices from working properly when charge at full speed.
I actually found a few problematic cables with that. These are pretty hard to find out normally because they only fail when charges at full speed (cause the voltage to drop too much) and transmits data at same time.
Or test a charger that labels fast charging but don't actually get any at all? The resistance changes a lot when you touched the cable(probably the connection between board and plug breaks)? Toss it away. They are broken or fake, why bother keep them.
Yeah it was much easier to diagnose ‘wrong cable’ failures before because of the obvious signs of whittling on the connector. (Although even in the USB-C world there are legitimate uses for connector-whittling when there is too much plastic and it stops you from using the next port over).
> While I complain, I would also like to mention the USB forum's insane naming strategy and non-obvious labeling system.
battered USB-C users: “You don't know him like I do, he really loves me and he says he's gonna release USB 4 and leave all this confusion behind us forever!”
USB-IF: “haha but what if I released usb 4 2.0? … … …”
Like c’mon nobody can deny that they’re absolutely doing this shit on purpose, creating confusing standards makes it easier for the forum members to market older crap and pretend it supports the latest thing without incurring the cost of actually supporting it.
it's extremely extremely concerning that this is the standards body that the EU has given a government monopoly to develop connectors for our devices. This forum does not have consumer interests at heart, at all, they are looking out for their members, not for you. And like an abusive partner, they aren't gonna suddenly wake up one day and change everything... they exist as an organization so that Asus can make 1% more profit on a laptop by using an older usb controller, not to produce good standards that consumers can understand.
Unlike HDMI, there's just no alternative right now. We desperately need "VESA for data connections" and to get the wheel away from the shitters at USB-IF.
If they stopped at USB 3.1 Gen 1 and 2, it’d be forgivable, but then doing USB 3.2 Gens 1, 2, 1x2, and 2x2, then USB4 Gens 2x1, 2x2, 3x1, 3x2, and now USB4 version 2 (what?), it’s hard to give the benefit of the doubt.
<rant>
Being able to market a USB 3.0 cable as USB4 despite only reaching 5 Gb/s is nothing short of incompetence, and almost certainly deceptive. There’s zero reason to rename old speed capabilities when we still refer to USB 480 Mb/s as… 2.0. If every feature of USB4 is optional besides 5 Gb/s, what’s the purpose of being able to call something “USB4 compatible” besides marketing?
It’s the same reason HDMI 2.0 is now 2.1! Because almost every feature that’s new in 2.1 is optional. A few months ago, the media went crazy about Apple listing their new MacBook as supporting HDMI 2.0 when 2.1 had been out for a while, but it turned out they were just being more honest.
Hard disagree. You can now buy a cable that works with everything. That's amazing.
Sure the labelling and capability spread is a nightmare to deal with if you want to make sure you can do high wattage charging or high bandwidth data transfer, but it's still much much much better than back in the day when everything had it's own proprietary cable.
If you have a big pile of shoddy cables throw them all out and buy a bunch of the same brand that you know works in bulk. Problem solved. It's not that bad.
If you're a techie looking to understand everything, USB-C is a confusing mess - however if you're just a regular person buying a random USB-C dock at the computer store, it's very likely the model you're going to get will support charging, display out and fast enough port speeds that using an external drive won't be painful.
It’s like using a low-bandwidth hdmi cable on a 4K tv. People may not notice that their device isn’t charging well but as long as it’s charging they may not complain. Doesn’t mean the situation is anywhere close to ideal.
Life is better when you stop caring about having something ideal. Because nothing ever has been or ever will be ideal. As soon as we achieve today's ideals, the goal posts will have been moved to something else we can only just not get.
I get this with a “cheap” USB c cable from Action. On good days it will train in at 60W charge. More often just at 30W. No problem for my 13” M1 laptop you never notice unless trying to rapid charge or looking at stats. But I did notice it with my old intel mbp it couldn’t stay charged.
> if you're just a regular person buying a random USB-C dock at the computer store, it's very likely the model you're going to get will support charging, display out and fast enough port speeds that using an external drive won't be painful.
sure, but, when they plug it into their computer it's not going to work because almost no motherboards support video or pcie over their type-c connectors. the dock will do it, that doesn't mean the rest of the system will.
also, while the cable that comes in the box will work... what if you need a longer one? if they buy a random usb-c cable off the shelf, will it work with video? survey says probably not... especially if they're a typical consumer and buy the cheapest one.
Not if you want to connect two 4K monitors at 60Hz, which is not an unusual thing to want to do. (It required that your dock, cables and machine support Thunderbolt 4).
I now regularly charge my laptop, camera, tablet, game controllers, and friends’ devices using the same charging cube or battery and cable. That was impossible and hard to believe even just ten years ago. The only odd one out is the iPhone. I actually like the Lightning connector more - too bad it’s proprietary and has limited speed/power.
I never experience incompatibility with my setup, but I’m sure it does happen, especially with budget cables/devices. I’m not sure what cables you’ve tried but I’ve had good luck with Anker and Apple’s newer cables.
I feel like now, even though there may be varying levels of compatibility/capability, at least more devices physically plug into the same cables with at least basic functionality. IMO it's better than having different physical ports that are completely incompatible.
Additionally, I've never had any problems with USB-C cables physically failing without extensive abuse. I cannot say the same for on-brand Apple charging cables.
Docks aside, most people don't actually face that many issues. I use a bunch of random USB-C cables for everything, charging the mouse, headphones, connecting a keyboard, charging my MBP, connecting a microphone, camera, audio gear.
It just works for almost everything, the only two more finicky devices I have are a Divoom speaker, and the Nintendo Switch which only like their own charger.
It's really only complex when you are trying to use the newest/most demanding features. The average person is just charging accessories and maybe plugging their laptop in to the monitor with the cable it came with.
And for docks you just buy the one that your laptop OEM sells and it all just works. If you have a macbook, just buy the apple adapter and you know it will work. Yes it's a bit expensive, but all the cheaper ones on ebay and amazon are defective.
> If you have a macbook, just buy the apple adapter and you know it will work.
This was very much NOT true for the x86 Macbooks. There is a gigantic thread on the Apple forums about it. I have 6 different docks of both TB3 and TB4 generations and none of them work on my x86 Macbook pro while they all work with my Windows and Linux machines. This was so bad that it pushed me to Linux full-time.
Has this gotten better on the M1/M2's?
Although, I'm not really looking to move back at this point. Going Linux full-time has been quite refreshing for me. I no longer have to buy apps to dork with everything that Apple refused to put useful defaults on.
Both CalDigit and Belkin each used to have two different TB3 docks on the Apple store (I see that is no longer true). I believe that Anker used to be sold for a while but is no more. There used to be a TB4 dock, but I don't remember which brand as it was expensive enough that we returned it when it didn't work.
I have the adapter you pointed out and it also fails.
In addition, I KNOW FOR A FACT that this broke with an OS upgrade because I have a precisely identical laptop that runs an earlier version of macOS and the dock works fine. And if I swap the drives, the failure follows the OS.
> Has always worked for me on Intel and Apple chips and have seen it always work for every other mac user.
That’s surprising. I used both a “Satechi” hub, and a Dell dock at work when I had my last x86 MBP and both worked fine for an external monitor and devices. Did you have some particular need re. thunderbolt or something?
Yep, the whole “both the source and the sink are capable of 90W PD but for some reason agreed to only do 45w on a cable that also supports 100w PD” is fun too.
I just wish I could buy a compact GaN charger that could charge a 16” M1 MBP at full speed that also had other ports USB-A and C ports to charge other stuff. Traveling with more than one charger in 2022 should be unnecessary, but the HYPERJUICE Stackable GaN 100w I have doesn’t charge the MBP anywhere close to 100W, the Satechi charges faster but has no USB-A ports, this Korean brand one with two A and two C I believe maxes at 65W per port, and the EGO EXINNO 240W is pretty picky about cables.
The least-bad solution I’ve found is the factory MBP charger, then use the MBP ports themselves as the charger, with A adapters where required :/
We were promised a future with less chargers waste, but I have more incompatible chargers than ever in my box of chargers and cables now.
I can put one 100W USB-C PD charger and cable in my bag and charge:
- Macbook Pro (work)
- Macbook Air (personal)
- Friend's PC laptop
- Friend's Android phone
- iPad
- Nintendo Switch
- Steam Deck
- Panic Playdate
- Sony Headphones
- Amazon Kindle
- Anker battery pack
- Fuji Camera
I think that's pretty great. Obviously these things aren't all in my travel bag at the same time, but my travel charging setup will work with any combination of them, from all of these different manufacturers, at up to 100W!
Sadly I do need to carry a USB-C to Lightning cable for my iPhone and AirPods, but it seems like even those final dominos may fall in the next year or two.
I agree that there are definitely shortcomings in how complex things get when dealing with Thunderbolt, Docks, and the naming of different versions, but for charging things are pretty great right now as long as you get chargers and cables that are rated for USB-C PD.
It's not really the naming causing issues but rather way too much has been put into the single standard which in turn leads to chaotic naming. I don't really know if there would be enough colors for that.
USB-C was meant to fit for all my needs but actually I have more cables than ever as there are so many of them with completely different capabilities. If they were not correctly labeled in the first place, it would be a pain in the neck to sort them out. Unfortunately I learned that the hard way.
USB-C Docks are even more chaotic than cables. I returned 3 docks in a row as none of them worked on any of my machines, doesn't really matter cheap or expensive, generic or brand ones. You just don't know which one is going to work. One from around 4 years ago still goes strong, the other one bought later was deadly long time ago. Aforementioned 3 docks returned, one almost got my laptop rebooted the second it plugged in. I never ever had so much problems.
I have the complete opposite experience. I now have multiple usb PD chargers that work flawlessly with my laptop, phone, tablet, other people's laptops, ... . This is a really big improvement! Oh, and my screen just has a usb c cable; connect it and you get 4k/60Hz and power and keyboard and mouse without any problems.
In contrast my Laptop's HDMI port only does 30Hz (older Thinkpad X1) and to get 60Hz via HDMI I need a usb c to HDMI adapter (which, again, works completeley hassle free).
There probably are some cases where usb c vs thunderbolt 3 vs usb 4 would matter, e.g. if you want fast storage and ethernet together with the screen connection. However, that would not have been any easier before usb c.
I haven't found this to be a problem in practice. I have two USB-C laptops -- a ThinkPad T480s and a MacBook -- and both of them work fine with my USB-C dock, and with each others' chargers. That's all I need.
While I complain, I would also like to mention the USB forum's insane naming strategy and non-obvious labeling system. Remember when USB 3 was easily identifiable because of the blue plastic in the port?