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Comment by rolobio | Hacker News Reader

From my research a few years ago, this is caused by the Switch asking the charger for 20V, but it actually expects 15V. The Nintendo charger obeys this hidden rule, but any other charger will happily provide 20V. I think the difference between a 20V and 15V charge isn't significant enough to blow the Switch up the first time you use it, but, over time it will blow up.

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If this is really the case Nintendo is vulnerable to a class action lawsuit. Any lawyers want to take the case?

You purchase the switch with a provided charger. If that charger caused issues, then there's potentially a suit. It's not obvious that you'd say the same thing if they used a proprietary port like what the 3DS uses.

No, I purchase a device with a Universal charger port and a universal charger. If the device doesn't work with any other universal charger that is their problem. Likewise if I use their charger on something else and it breaks my other device that is their problem.

The purpose of universal is everything works with everything. whoever breaks that is at fault and should pay the price. If Nintendo has used some other port I wouldn't have the expectation, but they used a universal port so they need to be compatible.

Nintendo clearly states on Switch specs page that the Switch dock has a "AC adapter port". Just because it uses a connector that physically looks like USB Type-C does not mean it's actually a USB type C port.

While they don't explicitly claim USB-C compatibility, creating a USB-C shaped port seems like a pretty clear representation that the dock is USB-C compatible.

They claim it's USB-C on the website: https://www.nintendo.com/switch/tech-specs/

For the record:

https://web.archive.org/web/20200925024652/https://www.ninte...

It says on the website USB-C for charging.

https://www.nintendo.com/switch/tech-specs/

It should be considered the same, because for all practical purposes, that's how the end users treat it - and it's not unreasonable on their behalf. If Nintendo wants a proprietary charger, they're welcome to use a proprietary port. But standards exist for a reason, and diluting them like that should be heavily regulated.

Is this a purposefully-engineered flaw to reduce confidence in 3rd party chargers?

If that would've been the goal, why would they have made the device with a USB-C port in the first place (rather than a proprietary port)?

More like Gen 1 Switch hardware was designed too early in USB-C era.

It’ll probably be fixed in future generations but Nintendo decided not to make design changes for Gen 1 and Gen 2 Switch to fully comply with USB-C PD specs.

The timeline here doesn’t jive. The Pixel C came out in 2015 with a USB-C port using the same SoC as the Switch (2017). Nintendo’s non-compliance is intentional.

Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence. Nintendo has a long history of proprietary plugs, if they wanted to make something proprietary, they would have just done it and nobody would bat an eye, they wouldn't bother making a slightly buggy USB-C implementation.

Do you also think that the Raspberry Pi 4 USB-C incompatibility is intentional? That came out waaay later

Only useful if incompetence is punished equally, otherwise every malicious actor plays dumb.

This is assuming Nintendo is incompetent. They have been making toys for 100 years and have been consistent pioneers in consumer electronics. They are no stranger to proprietary connectors. They opted to not develop one this time because it was seen as an unnecessary cost. Instead they took the parts of a well developed standard they liked and cut the corners they wanted to cut. They would have had a harder time finding an OTS non-compliant solution than an OTS compliant one. Playing by the standard cost too much. The only narrative here is “Nintendo sees no one is watching the cookie jar and takes from it. They prefer to be the only one with cookies anyway and don’t see the benefit of a communal jar.”, not “Nintendo don’t know what they’re doing”.

I would love to read more about this, but are you sure that's right?

I know the switch gets the spec wrong in a few places, but there is only one thing I have heard about that causes damage, and that is knockoff chargers that grossly overvolt the data pin used for power negotiation.

A device designed for 15V has some headroom. Probably 20V. It will fail immediately or it won't. The only potential variable is that your power supply is suddenly spiking to 21V or even more after prolonged use and that's what's destroying the Switch. There aren't many electronics components with a rated lifespan. Electrolytic capacitors are the most prominent ones and are easy to replace.

This is really interesting, do you remember where you read this, or have a writeup somewhere? I'm curious as to whether the Mariko/Switch Lite variants have the same problem.

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