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USB-C was supposed to simplify our lives, but instead it’s a total mess

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Re: USB-C was supposed to simplify our lives, but instead it’s a total mess

#111

Post by matt_heimer »

dx87 wrote: post #54
izacus wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Aha - you may find that your Switch CANNOT in fact share a charge - Nintendo's port is not necessarily safe to use with anything but its supplied charger. And I've just learned this lesson with a $60 bill from Nintendo repair after the port went pop and couldn't charge the device. I only have reputable chargers in the house from Apple and one from Anker aside from the Nintendo's own. It has worked reliably with pre…

It's not an urban myth, Nintendo acknowledged it and told people to not use 3rd party chargers. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/08/heres-why-nintendo-sw...

The article says the issue was with a third-party dock made by Nyko that supplies 9v on the CC pin when it should be 5v. How is that Nintendo's fault?

Re: USB-C was supposed to simplify our lives, but instead it’s a total mess

#112

Post by shawnz »

sandworm101 wrote: post #102
wlesieutre wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thunderbolt becomes part of the USB spec, everything else stays the same, and you're planning to throw out your devices and buy new ones?

No. I'm planning on keeping the stuff I have and leapfrogging the current pile of USB-C standards. Once they settle down, probably the week before the USB-D connector comes out, then I'll consider buying all new devices.

Wouldn't it be even smarter to wait for USB-E, or USB-F?

People need connectivity today, not some arbitrary time in the future. If you don't need the performance of USB 3/4, then why don't you just continue using your USB 2 equipment that still works perfectly fine?

You seem to be implying that eliminating backwards compatibility from USB would make things easier for you, but it sounds like it would actually just make things harder for you.

Re: USB-C was supposed to simplify our lives, but instead it’s a total mess

#113

Post by vr46 »

majewsky wrote: post #45
izacus wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Aha - you may find that your Switch CANNOT in fact share a charge - Nintendo's port is not necessarily safe to use with anything but its supplied charger. And I've just learned this lesson with a $60 bill from Nintendo repair after the port went pop and couldn't charge the device. I only have reputable chargers in the house from Apple and one from Anker aside from the Nintendo's own. It has worked reliably with pre…

I have a 2018 Switch and it works well with all chargers I've tested so far (mostly Apple and Lenovo besides the one that came with the Swift). My guess is that the problems that existed in the original hardware were fixed in a subsequent hardware revision.

Maybe the problems were fixed, but not by the time mine was ordered from Amazon on 8 December 2018. It charged fine with an Anker and Apple charger for, well, until it went pop this July. I'm glad yours is working fine, and it does come with a two-year warranty, but this was considered damage. From Nintendo's repair service:

> Our engineers have inspected your Switch Console and found damage due to USB-C Connector Damage. Under our warranty policy we do not cover the cost of the repair for damaged items. A payment of £53.50 is required for us to complete the repair.

Re: USB-C was supposed to simplify our lives, but instead it’s a total mess

#114

Post by paulirwin »

falcolas wrote: post #81
jeremymcanally wrote: post #4

Really? I find it to be a game changer for me. The fact that my laptop, Switch, iPad, and several other devices can all share a charge has made my life much easier. I can just sprinkle a few of them throughout the house and never be without power. Before it was always a hunt to find a cable, or I had to be in [x] room to charge [y] device because that's where the charger lived. Plus, I can charge my MacBook on either…

> Plus, I can charge my MacBook on either side, so that's basically life changing on its own. Yeah, be careful with that - for some MacBook Pro models charging from the left side will cause overheating and CPU throttling issues.

I was curious about this so had to go digging. For those that want the citation: https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/why-you-shouldnt-cha...

Re: USB-C was supposed to simplify our lives, but instead it’s a total mess

#115

Post by 542354234235 »

Waterluvian wrote: post #7
julianlam wrote: post #3

Sometimes it seems like I'm the only person with absolutely zero issues with USB-C. I have a Lenovo monitor that delivers power+HDMI+usbhub to my laptop, and having to only plug one thing in to access all my peripherals is amazing. I used a bog standard Anker USB-C cable for this.

I’m sure for some it’s a nightmare worthy of writing about, but yeah I’ve never had a problem. I love that USB-C trivially expanded my laptop to having two DisplayPort devices so I can run 3 4K screens at 60hz

It isn’t a nightmare, but it is an issue of conflicting compatibility. He flat out states that it is a vast improvement, and then goes into the issues it does have and what fixes should be focused on as we iterate in the future. I personally have had some of these issues, where some of my older chargers and cables do not work with more modern devices, as well as some devices having proprietary chargers and cables to get full power (looking at you, Oneplus “warp charging”). It isn’t the end of the world, but they are issues I hope people work on, so we can move closer to more universal standards and interconnectability. USB C is a huge step towards that, but it isn’t’ there yet.

Re: USB-C was supposed to simplify our lives, but instead it’s a total mess

#116

Post by megous »

josho wrote: post #60

The solution, I believe, is rather simple. The standards group should require any cable/device with USB 3 support to include a label on its packaging detailing which capabilities of USB 3 are supported. Think of the nutrition labels on food packaging, instead showing what the device does and does not support, something like this: Power Delivery——–30w max Thunderbolt————No support Bandwidth————–800Mbps max Video——————…

Some of these values are determined only after hooking the devices together. The devices may support 5V/5A (25W) but cable may only support 3A (but it can do 36W at 12V/3A), after connecting the devices you'll get max 15W.

:)

Re: USB-C was supposed to simplify our lives, but instead it’s a total mess

#117

Post by ahartmetz »

gruez wrote: post #40
baconandeggs wrote: post #11

USB-C charging is truly revolutionary. USB-C data is a clusterf *k, and worse of all, is not UNIVERSAL anymore.

>USB-C charging is truly revolutionary. Is it? I guess it's nice that I can charge my phone with my laptop charger, but it has the same issue as usb-c data where everything physically fits but are incompatible. eg. having to worry about whether a aftermarket charger provides enough voltage/current to charge your laptop.

Well, I tried, and I could charge my Thinkpad using a 5V/2A phone charger and an A->C cable. Very slowly of course, but it worked. If I was somewhere and I had forgotten my laptop charger, I could worry about whether a phone charger will work, but without USB-C, I could be sure that it won't work.

Re: USB-C was supposed to simplify our lives, but instead it’s a total mess

#118

Post by cameronh90 »

vr46 wrote: post #23
jeremymcanally wrote: post #4

Really? I find it to be a game changer for me. The fact that my laptop, Switch, iPad, and several other devices can all share a charge has made my life much easier. I can just sprinkle a few of them throughout the house and never be without power. Before it was always a hunt to find a cable, or I had to be in [x] room to charge [y] device because that's where the charger lived. Plus, I can charge my MacBook on either…

Aha - you may find that your Switch CANNOT in fact share a charge - Nintendo's port is not necessarily safe to use with anything but its supplied charger. And I've just learned this lesson with a $60 bill from Nintendo repair after the port went pop and couldn't charge the device. I only have reputable chargers in the house from Apple and one from Anker aside from the Nintendo's own. All my apple kit works fine off t…

I charge my Switch with various USB PD chargers (mostly Anker but also Apple, Google and others) and haven't had a problem so far.

I was trying to find some information about what would cause PD-compliant chargers to fry the Switch. It appears that while the switch is PD-compliant itself, they used a slightly non-standard connector that reduces tolerances and could, in some situations (most likely worn cables) cause some pins to electrically bridge and fry the port.

To be honest, this doesn't seem like an issue with USB C, just Nintendo intentionally implementing it wrong. They should have either used a proprietary port for the docking mechanism rather than modifying USB C in an unsafe way then saying only to use their proprietary charger.

Re: USB-C was supposed to simplify our lives, but instead it’s a total mess

#119

Post by izacus »

thrower123 wrote: post #43
jeremymcanally wrote: post #4

Really? I find it to be a game changer for me. The fact that my laptop, Switch, iPad, and several other devices can all share a charge has made my life much easier. I can just sprinkle a few of them throughout the house and never be without power. Before it was always a hunt to find a cable, or I had to be in [x] room to charge [y] device because that's where the charger lived. Plus, I can charge my MacBook on either…

Micro-USB was better. Especially since there are still so many existing devices that used micro-USB ports.

Only if you forget that there were at least 10 differente incompatible standards on how the device told the charger to pull more power.

Re: USB-C was supposed to simplify our lives, but instead it’s a total mess

#120

Post by megous »

gruez wrote: post #40
baconandeggs wrote: post #11

USB-C charging is truly revolutionary. USB-C data is a clusterf *k, and worse of all, is not UNIVERSAL anymore.

>USB-C charging is truly revolutionary. Is it? I guess it's nice that I can charge my phone with my laptop charger, but it has the same issue as usb-c data where everything physically fits but are incompatible. eg. having to worry about whether a aftermarket charger provides enough voltage/current to charge your laptop.

You can also charge your phone from your laptop and vice versa. Or one phone from other phone. Or just link two phones with a wired data connection with no power exchange.

There's a lot more flexibility than there was prior to USB-C.

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