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Comment by out_of_protocol | Hacker News Reader

Nothing about USB-PD in the law? Charging at 5W is not funny

This is about Directive (EU) 2022/2380[1]. It does mention USB-PD:

> In so far as they are capable of being recharged by means of wired charging at voltages higher than 5 Volts, currents higher than 3 Amperes or powers higher than 15 Watts, the categories or classes of radio equipment referred to in point 1 of this Part shall:

> 3.1. incorporate the USB Power Delivery, as described in the standard EN IEC 62680-1-2:2021 “Universal serial bus interfaces for data and power – Part 1-2: Common components – USB Power Delivery specification”;

[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv%...

This hopefully means the end to standards-violating nonsense like SuperVOOC? Originally SuperVOOC wasn't USB-PD compatible at all. Now, AIUI, SuperVOOC is partly USB-PD compatible, but only to lower wattages.

Why would it? If you can charge the phone with PD, but also with proprietary standards that offer something better it would meet the regulation. Seems like the best of both worlds.

No, what you describe is not better. Quite the opposite.

First, USB PD is capable of much higher wattages than what SuperVOOC artificially caps USB PD to.

Second, proprietary charging standards are not compliant with the USB specification, so it didn't meet the regulation.

Again, why would it be worse? There’s very real benefits to some of the proprietary standards that you can’t get from PD. Just because PD offers higher wattage doesn’t mean the overall charging is faster. If you have to generate a ton of heat to convert the incoming power to voltage that the battery can take, it will hinder how fast you can charge your phone. This is especially problematic at higher voltages.

But that's just another bullshit excuse to stay proprietary.

SuperVOOC doesn't really do anything special that isn't also achievable using the PD PPS (programmable power supply) specification.

The legislation covers radio equipment up to 100W, also power delivery is directly mentioned.

For ‘fast’ charging, the radio equipment listed in Part I of Annex Ia, if it can be recharged by means of wired charging at voltages higher than 5 volts, currents higher than 3 amperes or powers higher than 15 watts, must: (a) incorporate the USB Power Delivery (USB PD), as described in the standard EN IEC 62680-1-2 (as referenced in Annex Ia); and (b) allow for the full functionality of the said USB PD if it incorporates any additional charging protocol.

26. Is a radio equipment allowed to support a higher charging power (e.g. 40 W) when using a proprietary charging protocol than when using USB PD (e.g. 30 W)?

The RED (in its Annex Ia, Part I, point 3.2), ensures interoperability with different charging protocols. For that purpose, radio equipment which is subject to the ‘common charger’ rules must ‘ensure that any additional charging protocol allows for the full functionality of the USB Power Delivery referred to in point 3.1, irrespective of the charging device used.’*

Source: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=OJ:C_202...

I’m not sure it matters; I hope market economy should do the rest. I believe it’s slightly cheaper to manufacture a device with a single USB-C port which supports PD, compared to a device with two ports, one 5W USB-C and some other port for faster charging.

A reason to not demand USB-PD, such law would prevent upgrades to later better version of that thing.

> A reason to not demand USB-PD, such law would prevent upgrades to later better version of that thing.

Can we apply some common sense please? You're right that not allowing revised standards would be silly. So, they simply update the law to reference newer versions of the standard. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg_del/2023/1717/oj

How is a better standard going to be developed, though? Manufacturers aren't going to innovate, since they aren't allowed to sell anything besides USB-C.... so who is going to do the research and development for better designs, and how are we going to compare different possible improvements if manufacturers aren't allowed to try out anything new?

Stabdards development is very much done to push regulators to adapt new things. The incentive is either to be able to develop new products that give a reason to upgrade, or royalties from the standard, or patent license money.

They are allowed to try out new stuff as long as the baseline is also met. Hence no problem for Apple with MagSafe for example, because their laptops also have USB-C charging.

> I hope market economy should do the rest

Like it resulted in standardising on USB C? Oh wait, the EU had to force everyone.

> A reason to not demand USB-PD, such law would prevent upgrades to later better version of that thing

The EU has got you covered, there are provisions on updating the mandated standard.

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