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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

#341

Post by ThisIsTheWay »

rattray wrote: post #246
dcchambers wrote: post #82

USB-C is mostly a mess if you try to get away using the cheapest adapters/cables you can find, that often times won't follow the spec. Most of the issues vanish if you use high-end cables/adapters from reputable manufacturers. This is a departure from the world of Micro USB where most cheap cables worked just as good as "high end" cables. There are caveats. For example, my Nintendo Switch, a major electronics device…

Right, that's what I'd call a mess. The purpose of a standard should be that if a product conforms to it, the consumer can trust that the product will work. That isn't the case with USB-C. I've had some "USB-C" cables that can charge but not transmit video, some that can transmit video but not charge, and some that can do both. It shouldn't be possible to sell a cable that can't do both and call it USB-C.

Is USB-C a form factor, a standard, or both?

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

#342

Post by chrisseaton »

curryst wrote: post #331
chrisseaton wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> USB 3 connectors and ports were pretty much always blue. I’ve never seen a blue connector and ports in most laptops are just body coloured like in MacBooks.

It's rather ubiquitous, I'm surprised you haven't seen them. The plastic bits in the USB 3 ports in my motherboard, case, keyboard, _and_ the USB ports built into my monitor arms are all blue. Lower USBs are black. It's not universal, but it is very common.

Aren't those the ports? The ports are blue. I haven't seen a blue connector.

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

#343

Post by dathinab »

oso2k wrote: post #297
vr46 wrote: post #23

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. All my apple kit works fine off t…

I haven’t found this to be true. I’ve used 4 or more different chargers. A couple off-brand USB-C chargers, USB-C dock/charger, Apple USB-C chargers, USB-C to USB 2.0/3.0 cables with 1A, 2.4A, 2.5A chargers. All worked without issue. In fact, I left the Nintendo wall wart at home (I usually travel for work) and just bring along a USB-C to USB cable with me.

Yes only with either of following you might be in danger:

- A dock, the alternate mode used isn't fully standard conform and prone to fry your switch.

- A unlucky combination of cheap but fully standard conform charger with bad cable with switch.

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

#344

Post by sergeykish »

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——————…

SD cards is a good example, each card lists Generation, Capacity, Sequential writing speed (Speed Class / UHS Speed Class / Video Speed Class), Bus Speed.

Chargers lists Voltage, Current and Power.

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

#345

Post by jbay808 »

Even if it's a total mess, I have to say: it blows my mind that I can hook up my Thinkpad to an external GPU over USB-C, and all the necessary data makes a round trip to render an image on the laptop monitor within the frame update time, and it powers the ThinkPad at the same time over the same thin little cable.

And it automatically detects the graphics card when I plug it in and identifies it with no hassle.

Unbelievable.

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

#346

Post by kstrauser »

coryfklein wrote: post #322

Apple MacBooks with USB-C are standard issue for everyone at our company. You know what else is standard issue? A f$#%ing dongle so you can actually plug anything into said laptop. I can't help but think that all these folks saying, "oh it's so nice, everything I've ever wanted to plug in runs on USB-C" represent a tiny minority of the real world. The only two cables I own that can plug into my laptop connect it to:…

What's wrong with that, though? Of course there's going to be a while where we have to deal with both standards, but that's true of everything. I have a USB A-to-C hub sitting on my desk. It's plugged into my Mac Mini's USB-C port, and all the legacy stuff plugs into it. That's not such a terrible situation.

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

#347

Post by dathinab »

birdyrooster wrote: post #271
vr46 wrote: post #23

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. All my apple kit works fine off t…

Also if your switch battery ever gets really really low, you can’t charge it with anything other than the OEM charger.

As a side note that's common for undercharged batteries.

Charging undercharged lithium batteries must be done exactly right or it can get dangerous because of this is often only supported by OEM chargers or some workaround like keep your device plugged in for 12h even through it in no way indicates that is charging and it will then magically work again (my last phone )

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

#348

Post by leetcrew »

tpxl wrote: post #332
leetcrew wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sure, if you're familiar with the pinout, you can tell whether the data or power lines are completely missing. there was still no guarantee that any arbitrary cable would work with whatever fast charge implementation you were using. you would likely get 0.5A trickle charging at least, but the device could also just refuse to charge at all. from my perspective, USB-IF has taken a bunch of random shit that manufacturer…

>sure, if you're familiar with the pinout Literally half the pins are missing on charge-only cables. >but I don't really understand why they are getting so much flak for it. From me, because my partner bought an USB-C to 3.5mm jack converter that refused to work with "this device only supports official huawei converters". That, and two completely different cables with almost disjoint functionality look _the same_. If…

> Literally half the pins are missing on charge-only cables.

okay, but unless you know which pins are missing, how do you know you're not looking at a data-only cable?

> From me, because my partner bought an USB-C to 3.5mm jack converter that refused to work with "this device only supports official huawei converters". That, and two completely different cables with almost disjoint functionality look _the same_. If they mandated color coding or anything else to be able to physically determine what cable is what, I wouldn't complain.

this sounds like more of a huawei issue than a USB-C issue. if a manufacturer is just going to refuse to support a standards-compliant cable, you're out of luck either way. color coding would be nice though, they could have made that mandatory rather than recommended. I'm sure companies like apple wouldn't give a fuck either way and would just go with whatever looked aesthetically pleasing, USB-IF cert be damned.

> That all said, the _charging_ story is decent enough, everything else is garbage.

what "everything else" is garbage? there are higher speed variants, but you seem to already consider it reasonable to look at pins, so that shouldn't be a problem for you. thunderbolt support doesn't need any special pins; it just needs a high quality cable, which is analogous to the charging situation for this and the previous generation.

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

#349

Post by danhor »

floatingatoll wrote: post #235
mikepurvis wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't actually own a Switch, but my partner and I both charge our laptops (mine a Dell XPS, hers a MacBook) from the same after-market USB-C charging bricks. I don't love that it's like this, but basically the product page just lists every known-to-work device, including Nintendo Switch: https://www.amazon.ca/Charger-Adapter-Replacement-Thinkpad-M... Now, I'm a cheapskate, so most of my electronics are older device…

Word of warning, for those reading this far: The Switch and Switch Dock are not USB-C devices. That you’re able to plug in a USB-C charger or USB-C device and see it supposedly work just means that you haven’t yet encountered the scenario(s) that can electronically damage the Switch. Nintendo’s warranty does not cover this damage when it occurs, requiring a full-cost repair or replacement as you connected unlicensed…

The Brick-Gate issue, where many switches where bricked, was not an issue with generic chargers, but specifically 3rd party docks. And, as it turns out, the issue in that case wasn't on the switch side, but the manufacturers of the 3rd party docks, that used 9v on a normal signal pin (cc) [very much not spec compliant], which destroyed the pd chip inside the switch: https://hackaday.com/2019/08/04/the-not-quite-usb-c-of-ninte.... There have been few -if any- reports of switches being destroyed otherwise.

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

#350

Post by Causality1 »

cameronh90 wrote: post #118
vr46 wrote: post #23

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. 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…

The Switch is absolutely not PD compliant.

https://web.archive.org/web/20190301015818/https://plus.goog...

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