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Comment by onewheeltom | Hacker News Reader

The best thing about USB-C is the connector. Everything else is a mess. I have a powered speaker with a USB-C port for “charging” that does not work with a USB-C to USB-C cable. Only USB-A to USB-C cables will charge the speaker.

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This is a super common f*ckup in a truly ridiculous number of devices. It's so common that somebody published a PCB design to retrofit noncompliant devices to make them work: https://github.com/ide/usb-c-to-c-power-mod

Huh, TIL. My phone, gamepad, and headphones charge just fine with a C-to-C cable. I guess I’m glad to have somehow managed to avoid devices with that fuckup…

Offical cables to good devices, or reputable expensive brand vs ulta cheap nonames with logos one simply can't trust.

Never had issue with c-c cables neither, but I use tiny anker 65w charger and official samsung phone c-c cable (so getting ultra fast phone charging or whatever is the proper name), but its true that if I had to supply 3-4 locations with all necessary and convenient set of chargers and cables that would cost quite a bit. It really is one of those 'you get what you pay for', unfortunately very few people know this and I learned most of this here on HN too

I hate USB-C connectors. All my phones have had the same issue: USB-C connector busts and you can't insert the cable any more. I use high quality Anker cables, and I keep having to buy new Google Pixels over this. Replacing the USB-C port is around $160.

Username checks out ;) But seriously, yes, they are ridiculously fragile and usually only SMD soldered on, no hole through part to give it some mechanical strength. Very frustrating, I am super careful inserting USB-C connectors and have broken a couple already, fortunately not on anything expensive.

Do you recommend any kind of port-saver magnetic cable ... something like https://www.amazon.com/Magnetic-Charging-Charger-Transfer-20... but with high speed data?

I haven't used anything like that, for me the problem isn't tripping over cables but basically the force required to attach the cable in the first place. I guess a magnetic pigtail would reduce the number of times I need to insert the cable but a regular USB-C extension cable would do just as well for that purpose (and that's what I use right now).

That's still not perfect because the 2 cm of plug sticking out of the side of the device is long enough to put substantial leverage on the soldered part inside the device but that seems to be a given. I do try to find the shortest possible plug to minimize that force, but can't find them much shorter than that.

I had something similar to that on my MacBook and ended up giving up on it. I frequently ended up tripping a soft-fuse or something and the port would stop working until I either put the MacBook to sleep or shut it down (I forget which). Once it started back up, the port worked again.

It was nice to have a "mag-safe" USB-C, but frustrating to have the port stop charging randomly - something I always ended up noticing when my laptop throttled down to a crawl as it reached near-0% battery.

Magnetic cables aren't spec compliant, and for good reason. It's way easier to mess up with the voltage connections and fry the usb c port due to stray metal and a lot more exposed to ESD. You should avoid using them.

https://www.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/motlhn/magnet...

This probably isn't your issue, but I've had issues in the past, usually with a cell phone that sits in my pocket, that show up as cables no longer maintaining detent and falling out. The issue was actually accumulated dirt in the bottom of the female connector. Scraping it out with a toothpick fixed it for me. Just a FYI.

There are little rubber covers that you can use to close the connector hole when it isn't in use.

i feel as though the port in the phone is male, and the cord side is female, since the part that actually "mates" goes into the cord, not the other way around.

when i started typing this i had a coaxial cable in mind as an example of "looks like female but isn't", although UHF/F come close. the "male threaded" part is not the male connector.

The connector on every phone I have ceases to work eventually not because the connector is broken, but because the socket has (sufficiently) filled with pocket lint such that the plug isn't able to reliably connect anymore. One just needs to remove the lint from the port. (And note that you won't see the lint by gazing into the port, either; it has usually been compacted into the bottom of the socket by the plug squishing it down.)

I've fixed ~4 phones by doing that.

This was a problem with USB micro, too.

Magnetic cables are a good solution to this and other problems. The magnetic tip stays inserted at all times, preventing lint infiltration.

Then you need some extra connector or cable after few years and realize none of them are in production anymore...

And this is why I buy a case of junk ....

Still have some working iPad 1 chargers (fat lightning).

I've only seen two designs of magnetic USB cables. The most popular is round, and I've confirmed different manufacturers' tips/cables are fully interchangeable.

The other style is oval shaped, and those would obviously be incompatible.

And what's the worst that happens? I might eventually have to switch to normal, horrible cables, like you use every single day? Enjoy wearing out your cables and devices...

I have three incompatible round tips: 20W, 4 connectors, 60W, 5 connectors (x2).

Aliexpress brands respectively uslion (x2) and elough.

From my understanding, this violate the spec potentially connecting all the pins at the same time which causes some sort of spike in power which is bad?

Any suggestions for how to clear the socket out?

Plastic sharp object to pick. Maybe toothpick and loads of lighting.

the wooden ones require a knife to shave them down thinner.

I would just go by feel. Even when there's a lot of lint in there, it can be really hard to see it, so just probe around until nothing else comes out.

I know the sibling suggested a toothpick, but everything besides a needle has been too large and too week in my experience. There's nothing important at the bottom of the port so just jam it in there and scrape around until you can get a bunch of lint out. You will be surprised what you find.

I use a safety pin. The amount of lint I get out is unbelievable. And I have to scrape hard to get it all out, it's extremely compacted. Don't stop until you hear the sound of metal on plastic.

Whittle the toothpick a smidgen with a razor blade or similar.

Metal scraping flimsy metal contacts that are nigh-unrepairable is a hard lesson. Unfortunately it is also one that I seem to need to re-learn on a consistent basis.

I think going gently with a metal needle might be safer? The metal contacts are springy and need a certain amount of force to bend.

I have had luck with those disposable floss picks. They are entirely plastic and the pick stick end is suitably narrow to fit into the port. Plus they are incredibly cheap.

There are dozens of tools marketed specifically for this (search “phone port cleaner” on Amazon) but I’ve had the best luck with a pushpin.

I use a sewing needle.

I do like the suggestions of plastic or wood; that's probably a better idea as the material is softer. My spudger doesn't fit a USB port, sadly. IDK if a toothpick would, I'd never thought of that.

I try to be mindful of the actual connector's pads when I clean, so as to not scrape them.

I just dig out my lightning port with a toothpick every time I wake up to find my phone didn’t charge. I have no idea how safe that would be with a USB-C port, which is literally the only reason I dread the otherwise obviously-good transition of iPhones to a standard port.

> no idea how safe that would be with a USB-C port

I've cleaned mine with a needle several times without any issues. Being a little careful seems to suffice.

It should be safer with a USB-C port, since the springs (the most fragile part) are in the cable, not in the port; with lightning, the springs are in the port instead of the cable.

> This was a problem with USB micro, too.

It's also a problem with Apple's Lightning. Every once in a while I preventively take a toothpick to my iphone in order to delint it.

You can delint a lightning port with a toothpick, though. I use special (tiny) plastic tweezers to clean my USB-C ports.

I'll second the "relevant username" sentiment, but without the winky face. I've had phones break in a variety of ways, but the USB-C ports have always kept working.

I have never once seen a USB-C connector fail device side. It's so far the most reliable connector I've ever used long enough to have an opinion, perhaps with the exception of US 120v plugs which suck for their own reasons.

I've had exactly one device connector actually die. It was a Nokia phone where there was a design flaw. The backplate had an indentation where the charging port was that was just a little too deep, allowing the cable to wiggle a bit in the port, damaging it more than usual and eventually killing it.

The flaw was acknowledged by Nokia. It was handed down by a phone upgrade addict though so I couldn't be arsed to try and make a claim for free repairs or something.

I've had a lot of cables die though, but mostly because I bought them at a gas station in "need to charge asap" type situations.

Haha I think you're talking about the Nokia 7 plus right? I was in the same boat, loved the phone but the port died on me after 2 years...

Indeed, that was the one!

If you keep buying the same cables and they keep breaking things, they’re probably not high quality.

In my experience, Anker products are nothing short of garbage. Keyboards and adapters all break within weeks. I feel like all the “anker is the best!” stuff I see online is stealth marketing because I’ve had better results buying absolutely anything else.

I bend all my cables and it’s all my fault. I put my laptop on a pillow or drop it.

It happens to all the brands.

I’ve recently been bringing my laptop to bed to watch TV with my pup, knowing full well I’m risking a catastrophic somethingorother. So far we’ve had good luck, most of my worry has shifted to what havoc will be wrought when I inevitably fall asleep and my pup has full unsupervised keyboard access.

Laptop fell off my bed recently and damaged the screen connector. I am having the screen replaced but Apple’s authorized service center says they need to wipe the drive. I will probably spend a few days configuring everything again. Such is life.

Try cables with right angle USB-C connector. Right angle connector is shorter and it creates a shorter lever.

I only have USB-C on my laptop (MacBook Pro; you can guess my phone’s non-standard port), and I’m rather a clumsy person. I haven’t had any issues with anything breaking, but I’ve heard a lot about the risk. Some suggest it’s the port design itself to blame (eg wrong amount of snugness in either direction), others that it’s the hollow plug design. I imagine both are at play, but my hunch is the ports are more to blame than the plugs (thinness = excessive snugness). Despite this hunch, I wince every single time I notice the hollow plug, because it always suggests a more fragile part I can neither see nor safeguard.

It's a shame Apple won't open up the Lightning connector and let everybody use it. From a physical device connection and hardware failure perspective, it's actually better.

I don't think the lighting port is categorically better than USB-C, even discounting the lesser pin count.

Lightning connectors only have eight pins, the other side of the connector has the gold plating just for the looks of it. The socket is monitoring both sides with flipped pin order, one side is always unused. It's a ridiculously wasteful design. I'm glad other companies can't use it.

I've had two broken USB-C connected phones in the past, the Oneplus 3 and Oneplus 5. Both had their C ports on a separate flex cable, with the port itself screwed onto the aluminium back of the phone on both sides. I was pleasantly suprised by this, it is a really solid construction. I've never had a broken USB-C socket though, it's been the battery for both phones. I think the C port is the best mobile connector on the market ever from a physical point of view.

I spent a long time back and forth with Anker customer support on an inability to charge my Pixel 6 Pro with an Anker charger and cable reliably.

It turned out that if I used a non-Anker cable or a non-Anker charger, everything works fine. Anker were happy to send me replacements for things, but no only-Anker solution would work reliably. I bought a bunch of cheap generic brand USB-C cables and they work much better.

I've stopped buying Anker now, since there now seems to be no benefit over buying a generic brand.

Wow that sucks. I guess I should count myself lucky as I have gone the mostly-Anker route wrt cables and charges and haven't ran into this issue with my P6Pro, yet. I guess it's only a matter of time.

The way USB-C works with adapters to legacy USB (USB-A and USB-B) is brilliant. Unlike in USB-C, in legacy USB the power roles are fixed: the USB-A socket and USB-B plug provide power (source), the USB-A plug and USB-B socket receive power (sink). A USB-C to legacy adapter always has a USB-C plug (never a USB-C socket), and one of these four legacy alternatives. If the legacy end of the cable is one which receives power (USB-A plug or USB-B socket), the USB-C end has a pull-up resistor to that power on the configuration pins, indicating to the USB-C device that this cable provides power; if the legacy end of the cable is one which provides power (USB-A socket or USB-B plug), the USB-C end has a pull-down resistor to ground on the configuration pins, indicating to the USB-C device that this cable requests power. The USB-C device only connects its power output to the socket when it sees that pull-down resistor, so the power supplies will not be shorted together if the cable always provides power to it. And the only thing necessary for an adapter, or for an USB-C device which only receives power, is a pair of resistors.

And this explains your scenario: in the USB-A plug to USB-C plug case, the cable always provides power on the USB-C plug; in the USB-C to USB-C plug case, the device on the other end will only provide power when it sees the pull-down to ground, which should be provided by the device, and in your case is probably missing.

I was going to say the same thing. I don't understand how that's possible - it's incredibly frustrating.

Always, or did it just break the ability to flip it upside-down?

If the 5.1k pull-down resistors are missing on the device side, it will not charge from a USB-C wall brick, laptop, etc. in either orientation, but it will work fine when charging from a USB-A outlet with a USB-A to USB-C cable. This is because USB-C outlets are not permitted to provide any power until they detect the presence of a "legacy" device that just wants 5v (as signaled by the pull-down resistors on the device).

Ducky keyboards are the same...

The way USB C is designed you have to go out of your way to make that happen. I believe you (!) but I'm not sure how I could build a device to behave that way. Could it be due to a weirdly noncompliant power adaptor?

I’ve got a pair of cheap Bluetooth headphones that do that too — they only work with a usb a to c cable, not with a proper usb c power supply and cable.

That device, the speaker in this case, is missing the pull-down (Rd) resistors on CC1 and CC2 to say that it's happy to get 5v@500ma when connected using a USB-C to USB-C cable. Those resistors aren't needed/used for signaling when using a USB-C to USB-A cable, which is why that works.

https://community.silabs.com/s/article/what-s-the-role-of-cc...

So they saved a fraction of a cent per unit on two resistors?

To GP's point, that's the problem with Postel's Law. It's possible that was intentionally skipped to save fractional cents, but I think it's also possible they made the device and just never tested with a usb-c to usb-c cable. "It works on my machine (which is too old to have usb-c ports because we don't buy macbooks for hardware designers)!"

I have a retro games portable that behaves the same way.

No, it’s the peripheral device. There were initial confusions among bootleg/hacky manufacturers such as:

- whether CC pins are to be handled by the cable or by the device,

- whether added pins are for insertion detection or for protocol use by the host,

- which pins are to be pulled down or left NC for charging,

- whether USB-C is meant to be a “mobile” connector, or a replacement for the USB-A connector, or how soon the replacement is to occur.

As the result, there were some devices that has a USB-C input but only works with an A to C cable.

I have a USB recharged LED lantern with the same problem

Really, compared to lightning USB-C connector is pure trash. But compared to USB-A I concede it is an improvement.

i always worry about the lightning connector shorting out when it's not plugged in to something.

When they were babies both of my kids happily chewed on lightning cables that were plugged into a charger. They're both still here but all of those cables stopped working shortly thereafter.

"When a Lightning cable is just lying somewhere connected to a charger/computer, but not connected to a device, HiFive limits current on the PWR to a really small value (around 10-15 mA according to my measurements). To enable full current, 0x74 request must be issued by Tristar and processed by HiFive."

https://nyansatan.github.io/lightning/

Woke up with a lightning connector burning into my back, was very uncomfortable

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