USB-C gets a bit more universal as the EU's mandate goes into effect | Hacker News Reader

USB-C gets a bit more universal as the EU's mandate goes into effect

arstechnica.com

13 pointsashitlerferad12 comments

I sort-of like USB-C connectors (though they are somewhat fragile), but I am seriously confused when it comes to the ZOO of USB-C cables and their capabilities/lack thereof. Way too much diversity there.

Even the connector (host-side) is a world of confusion.

Take a random port on a random laptop, of any vintage you choose. Pretty much every port you can name is easily identifiable and you can tell what it's capable. HDMI, VGA, USB-A (even with 2.0 vs 3.0), 3.5mm headphone, charging, Ethernet, whatever: any high school student with a passing interest in computers will be able to tell you what you can (and can't) do with it with 95+% accuracy.

USB-C, on the other hand, is all of the above and none of the above at the same time.

Pick a random USB-C port on a random laptop. (We'll leave mobile phones out for now.)

If you're lucky, it's got a little lightning-strike icon, and it's almost certainly Thunderbolt 3 or Thunderbolt 4, and stuff will Just Work. Mostly. To tell if you've got TB3 or TB4, plug in a dock and check if your second 4k monitor works, I guess.

If you're less lucky, it will have a USB Super-Speed logo or something next to it. You might be able to connect a display via adapter if it supports the DisplayPort alt mode, but you won't know till you try.

If you're even less lucky, it will be completely unlabelled. So just plug in stuff and see what works. USB4, perhaps? You might be lucky and have optional TB3 compatibility on it. Possibly one of the various USB 3.0 variations, with their plethora of available speeds. Most likely you'll be able to get at least a USB 2.0 connection to plug in your mouse via a dongle. Might be a weirdly-shaped analog headphone jack, but it's possible (in theory, at least) that the only thing behind it is the same old 5v at a few hundred mA that we've had since the 90s.

And none of these details, as far as I can tell, are documented anywhere.

Fortunately, from what I can tell most laptops nowadays at least support TB3, but I'm sure we'll be plagued by unlabelled mystery ports for quite a while yet.

And I welcome it wholeheartedly. Amount of different, incompatible powerbricks in my bathroom is frustrating. Feels like every manufacturer and even device needs its own.

any guesses as to what the "unintended consequences" of this will be? the cookie law gave us endless annoying cookie permission pop ups, I wonder what this will cause..

This law will mostly just produce a bunch of extra e-waste since lighting charger cables and headphones will need to be thrown out prematurely. Phones will also get slightly thicker but that is not a huge loss.

Charging cables seem to have a life of somewhere in the 3-12 month range for the typical user. Sure, I have lightning cables I've been using for six years without issue, but most people abuse them or lose them in a matter of months.

I'm not sure if I have met this hypothetical person throwing four power cables into the trash every year. The chorus of people lamenting a drawer of unused cables would suggest that not throwing cables in the trash every season is the more common issue. Personally I will need to replace 2 connector cables and a pair of headphones when I inevitably need to replace my >5 year old phone, so naturally I am not well disposed toward the the unelected bureaucrats who decided to make me pay an extra $25 and produce a small pile of trash.

Unintended consequences will be that we will have drawers full of USB-C cables working with certain devices. Case in point, family member came over before xmas. They wanted to download videos from their dash cam, they asked for a USB-C cable. None of the three cables I shared with them, of various brands, powered their camera. They had to use that “special” USB-C cable that came with their camera.

USB-C cables are standardized. Nearly everything will charge with standard cable and charger.

There is a problem with the cheap devices that will only charge from USB-A chargers not USB-C. The reason is that they don't spend the cents for USB-C charging chip or the resistors to signal that support legacy USB mode to USB-C charger. The problem isn't the cable or charger, the device is defective.

Whatever the reason. “But it has a USB-C port”.

The most likely cause of this is a failure of the device manufacturer to adhere to the USB specs. USB-C (or maybe 3.0 or maybe PD) requires some resistors on the data lines for power negotiation. Even when you just want low level 5V at 0.5A you’re supposed to have some specific resistors to tell the upstream power provider what you want/need. Previous USB power didn’t require this and a bunch of devices that were designed for micro usb were updated to C connectors without revisiting the power circuit. As a result these non-compliant devices can’t pull power from compliant power supplies and computers. Options are to use the “special” cable (which is almost invariably a USB-A to USB-C cable since non-C ports provide 5V at 0.5-1A continuously) or to use “dumb” or otherwise non-compliant power supply (non-PD compatible power banks for example might still supply current on the USB-C out)

And yes this is stupidly annoying

It might limit innovation on what is after usb-c . We might get stuck with usb-c for a while.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com