Say Hello To The Hideous New USB 3.0 Micro Connector | Hacker News Reader

Say Hello To The Hideous New USB 3.0 Micro Connector

androidbeat.com

51 pointsMBCook65 comments

Uh... It's ugly? Ok. That is a highly highly highly subjective statement. I don't think it looks ugly. The fact that its fully backwards compatible with micro USB is fantastic. The fact that it just gracefully downgrades if you only have USB2 or a microUSB connector is fantastic. It's more asymmetric, so you're less likely to plug it in the wrong way, which is fantastic. The damage statement is ridiculous speculation, has the author ever experienced this ever? The ports pretty small and robust.

Shallow article.

As an Android proponent, and someone turned off by the iPhone's proprietary nature, I must admit: Lightning is elegant compared to this.

I understand there is the form camp and the function camp, and that I think (in my opinion) that most people on HN would subscribe to the "form following function" ideology. The USB 3 plug does look hideous compared to the clean microUSB plug, but I guess that shouldn't matter.

Could we really not pass more power and data over a standard USB 2.0 connection/port? sigh

Lightning is elegant precisely because it is not backwards compatible. This connector is. You can plug a usb 2.0 micro cable in it and it will work properly.

If we are willing to throw everything out, you could make something brand new and shiny like lightning too.

I'm not sure anyone cares about being able to plug a USB 2.0 Micro cable into a USB 3.0 device. Perhaps they should have asked somebody.

Nobody except everyone with existing chargers, cables, etc. Have you never gone out with a phone and realised you're low on charge and need to plug in? Backwards compatibility is a major win here.

Have you never gone out with a phone and realised you're low on charge and need to plug in?

Sure, but for how many years should I expect to hold the world hostage to my obsolete phone?

What about the millions who want to use the car phone charger they brought for their last phone?

(Shrug) They can use an adapter. It wouldn't be any less clunky or awkward than this cable.

I actually have a stack of 2 adapters on my car cable to let me use my iPhone 5. One handles conversion from the old FireWire voltage source to the more regulated ISB style, the other adapts the 30 pin to lightning.

I would. I've got a decade's worth of USB 2.0, Micro USB cables laying around. So do all of my friends. If I'm out somewhere and need to charge my phone or (less likely) transfer a lot of data, I don't want to have to deal with a connector that can't help me because it isn't backwards compatible.

I keep spare microUSBs everywhere -- my apartment, my bag, my office, etc -- to charge my various devices. Having to keep a completely separate set of a different cable would be annoying. I think most people have plenty of spare micros that this is useful for them.

That feature, to me, guarantees USB 3's adoption, and massively boosts my confidence in the standard.

That philosophy is going to wear a bit thin by the time USB 8 comes along.

Yes, I am willing to throw out an old cable to get a much better solution. Is there a reason that most people shouldn't be willing? Life is too short to always be worrying about backward compatibility.

Problem: We have 34 standards

    Is there a reason that most people shouldn't be willing?

Problem: We have 35 standards.

Apple had one connector for a decade and people complained when they changed. I guess if you randomly pick a number less than 100 and say if we add 1 then we have a bigger problem, it sounds convincing. I'll take a much more improved technology any day.

I'm willing to throw everything out as long as it is very infrequent, for a good reason, and known to be for a long lifespan before doing it again.

Going from 30-pin to Lightning was acceptable, as it really does seem to be a 10+ year future standard, and Dock had been around for a long time (although it is a real pain for the car; I'd like to put in a lightning spec dock, but I need to find audi radio keys and either do it or find someone else to do it who won't screw up my electrical system this time (sigh) and really I just hope my car gets totaled and a Model S falls from the sky.) Going from MagSafe to MagSafe 2 was infrequent, but didn't feel meaningful.

I got pissed when ThinkPads moved from 14.4V to 20V sometime around the T43p -> T60 series, which is when I moved to Apple, so there's always a risk.

There's nothing particularly wrong with the connector. The article picks a specifically ugly/cheap looking cable, though. Others look better, eg:

http://i.imgur.com/7zEL7HJ.jpg

Also it's not really new - as others have pointed out people with USB drives have been using these for a while.

Here's an even shinier one: http://i.imgur.com/JfODxoo.jpg

I'll take the blue one if it's cheaper. I don't think I've even thought about pretty cables until this article.

It's 2013.

The only question worth asking is:

Can a person easily connect and disconnect this cable in the dark (or if blind?)

If the answer is no, then the cable design is terrible.

With the iPhone in particular, the problem isn't the cable, which is fine, but with the lack of a decent dock. Lightning connectors aren't much easier to hook up in a dark room than any other connector.

If you can find the depression of the home button on an iOS device, you know where the Lightning or 30-pin dock connector goes into.

I believe this has been the case with every iOS device (but not necessarily every iPod device, some of which had the connector shifted to one side or the other) since the beginning.

Hand a blindfolded person an iOS device and Lightning cable end, and they'd likely be able to put the two together fairly quickly if they've ever touched any other iOS device before.

It does suck for docks though, as it's not wide enough to balance on like the 30-pin connector was.

USB cables are easy to plug in the dark, I do it every night. When you pick up the cable you will probably have your thumb on one side of the connector and a finger on the other. One side will be textured with the USB logo, the other will be smooth. The textured side is up. If your cable isn't like this it is out of spec.

This must be the hardware analogy to not refactoring code.

Backwards compatibility is all well and good but that looks ridiculous.

Why couldn't it have been made to work in either orientation? Backwards compatibility? Apple patents?

It could but the connector would end up costing more (or would require a smarter circuit).

I.e. Lightning.

Typical consumer electronics: save 5 cents per unit, and force the end user to spend orders of magnitude more than that in lost time fumbling with the thing.

Of course, I don't blame the manufacturers. It is ultimately the buyers themselves who make this choice, by preferring price over almost anything else.

It is backwards compatible with micro usb cables.

This being said, the backwards compatibility of the next generation will look fearsome.

It could have been backwards compatible and reversable—two micro usb ports next to each other, rotated 180 degrees.

That seems like a great idea, but then new cases would have to be accounted for. For example, what happens when someone plugs two micro usb cables into the one micro usb3 connector? Dealing with that would add complexity and therefore expense and size.

Yeah, that blue, injection-molded plastic looks terrible. I bought a new portable (external) Seagate 1TB today that came with a cable that had this connector. Its plastic covering was much nicer and black.

It looks unusual but I don't think many people care as much about the aesthetics of their cable connectors as the author does.

My Seagate HDD has one of these cables and I love it. Its a breeze to get it plugged in because you can feel instantly if you have it the right way around. I don't much care what my connectors look like, I don't spend much time admiring their form, I just grab 'em and plug 'em in!

It looks like the cable to some of my external SSD drives. I think it is a bit large for a phone, but given phones seem to be getting larger, maybe that isn't so much of an issue.

How am I supposed to plug it into micro usb2.0 socket?

You aren't, the port is backwards compatible, not the cable.

Personally it looks great. I've resorted to painting white spots of the side of all my micro-USB plugs so I know which side is up in lower light. With this one, you'll be able to run a thumbnail along it to tell which side is which in total darkness.

So it's more clunky, but a significant portion of phone users don't have perfect vision and this will aid them.

If the cable/connector/device is following convention, the connector should have the USB logo facing "up".

But of course, the phone and tablet manufacturers can't agree which way is up. (I think it's screen-side up, but many seems to think it's back-side up.)

New? USB 3.0 is five years old at this point.

Unlike the lightning connector, USB 3.0 is fully backwards-compatible with USB 2.0 and regular USB cables.

I look forward to the day we stop using cables at all for these devices. My electric toothbrush charges without a connector by simple induction; I don't see why a phone shouldn't either. Plus a phone should be able to transfer data wirelessly at reasonable speed.

To be fair, your phone likely consumes far more power than your electric toothbrush. I would be interested in learning about the viability of this type of technology in the phone space.

That's true. The draw is quite a bit higher than for a simple electric motor, but as devices use less and less power in the future, it should at least be available for some.

Something like a Moto Fone shouldn't need cables https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_FONE

There are many examples already in use. At least Palm Touchstone (charging lots of late palm phones and the touchpad) and Qi (Nexus 4, Galaxy S3, some htc phones) are out there and usable.

That's a matter of device choice. My phone charges wirelessly.

Power mat I presume? Doesn't that still require a device specific base/connector?

> I don't see why a phone shouldn't either

Any Nexus 4 can charge inductively. The problem is that the 'standard' charging docks are actually incompatible (my $80 Nokia one doesn't work), and they take about twice as long to charge.

> Plus a phone should be able to transfer data wirelessly at reasonable speed

Like, say, 802.11ac speed?

There should be one standard for wireless charging, but I'm afraid we'll end up with just one more if that's the case. Obligatory http://xkcd.com/927

802.11ac Will do nicely. It's supposed to be gigabit capable (allegedly). Considering we've been transferring files between PCs at that speed for a while, it's about time this came to wireless.

Ugly as it may be, I actually think it's nice for making easier to plug it on the correct orientation, since the two segments are assymetric. Remember how people complained it was hard to find the correct way to plug an USB device on a quick glance?

> you’re really going to have to pay attention to where you’re sticking the cable in so you don’t do any damage.

Damage? Is there a known failure mode with micro USB 3, or is the author unusually heavy-handed with this stuff?

Lightning blows this away.

In what way? Connector aesthetics? Or technical specs?

One of the reasons the connector looks like this is because it's backwards compatible. So on that front, lightning definitely doesn't "blow it away".

If they threw backwards compatibility out the door, like Apple did, it would "look better", but if you are always willing to throw everything out and people are always willing to go along with you, you can basically do whatever you want.

Being directional makes it sort of suck. I'm all for backwards comparability but this is one of the original design flaws of USB. I hope they fix it at the cost of losing backwards compatability some day.

While a bit ugly, at least it's pretty easy to see which way is 'up', which can be tough with micro-USB.

The Lightning's reversible orientation is really nice though.

That does help. But it's 2013 and I think we should be able to plug a device in at night without having to try 2 times.

A reversible design would have been elegant. Lightning just requires every connector to have a chip which figures out its orientation and which is intended to obstruct third parties from making compatible accessories.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_(connector)#Technolog...

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/10/apple-revising-mfi-prog...

User experience.

What's the bus speed of Lightning? Wasn't it revealed that Apple's HD output actually uses a really compressed low-res version as Lightning simply doesn't have the bandwidth to transmit 1080p at even 60Hz?

I'm not sure it's known. I remember wondering if that was a problem with the cable, or if the GPU in the Mini just has trouble. I would have liked to see test results with an iPad 3.

Either way, I'd assume the speed could be increased later without a new connector.

I wonder if this will allow MHL and host mode at the same time?

does it guarantees the same speed as any standard usb3.0 port?

Oh no! Fashion crisis!

Oh wait-- I just remembered. Wireless chargers exist. Crisis averted.

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