161–170 of 751 posts
An average consumer probably gets a new phone every 1-2 years. That means 50-100g of junk plastic every year per person. This seems very small compared to the amount of non-recyclable plastic I get every time I go to the supermarket (Fruit and veg in plastic wrapping). Are USB cables very resource heavy to make? Is there something that makes them especially bad when compared to other waste?
Much closer to 4 years.
Good, though in practice it's not the charger the problem, I use the same USB plug everywhere, it's Apple and their cable. Right now I always need with me a micro USB cable, an USB-C one, and Lightning, because Apple thinks different™. What's Apple reasoning for not abandoning Lightning for USB-C on their phones?
> What's Apple reasoning for not abandoning Lightning for USB-C on their phones? I can think of 3 reasons: 1. A lightning port is slightly smaller than USB-c, so it enable Apple to keep their phone slimmer than the competition in theory. 2. Apple loves to be in control of everything. With lightning, they could make a switch to a "lightning 2.O" cable / port whenever they so pleased. With USB-C they would be restricte…
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but without writing in law apple will never care about environment right? They are getting money from each connector so why would they? Is it possible to solve such issue without law? What solution do you propose? If you have solution let us know?
If citizens care about the environment they will stop buying Apple products. They don’t, hence they don’t care about the environment. Why make laws that go against the citizen wishes?
And I don't believe for a second that making all USB-C cables capable of everything in the standard isn't massively wasteful itself. If the intent is to cut down on waste then that would miss the mark.
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Can't we have protocol-agnostic cables? I mean, we use hundreds of different protocols over-the-air, so why can't we do the same with cables?
3.5mm headphone jack with hole drilled in midle carrying optical fiber would handle all use cases i can imagine. From delivering power, charging phones to connecting several 8K monitors. multiple protocols can use separate wavelengths of light, all at once in single fiber. Hundreds of gigabits are possible, maybe more, depending on the length. While still being able to connect wired headphones.
The sockets would need some work for decent power transfer - it needs to do at least the 150 watts that USB-C can do, and preferably 150 kwatts for charging a car.
For 150 watts while maintaining backwards compatibility, all that's needed is larger contact area (curved spring clips) to support 3 amps and the use of 48 volts after negotiation.
For 150 kilowatts we'd be talking some cutting edge stuff, but not beyond the realms of possibility. Specifically, you'd probably need to use voltages up to 20,000 volts, 10 amps, which is going to mean you need to have mating and sealing rubber isolators on both plug and socket at least 3mm thick between poles. At these voltages, you cannot have air between the pins, so it must be a hermetic seal. You'd also need to measure leakage current and keep the cable capacitance low enough that when someone cuts through the cable with scissors the voltage can be dropped in microseconds to prevent zapping them.
Good, though in practice it's not the charger the problem, I use the same USB plug everywhere, it's Apple and their cable. Right now I always need with me a micro USB cable, an USB-C one, and Lightning, because Apple thinks different™. What's Apple reasoning for not abandoning Lightning for USB-C on their phones?
> What's Apple reasoning for not abandoning Lightning for USB-C on their phones? I can think of 3 reasons: 1. A lightning port is slightly smaller than USB-c, so it enable Apple to keep their phone slimmer than the competition in theory. 2. Apple loves to be in control of everything. With lightning, they could make a switch to a "lightning 2.O" cable / port whenever they so pleased. With USB-C they would be restricte…
In theory sure but in practice there are thinner Android phones with USB-C connectors than any iPhone. Basically these days the thickness is purely about how good camera you want and how much battery. The usb/lightning plug is not really an issue.
For the record the thinnest iPhone is iPhone 5 at 7.6 mm and thinnest Android is Xiaomi Mi 11 Lite at 6.8mm
Also from a purely user experience point of view making the phones thinner then they mostly are now does not add anything instead just makes the experience worse as the phone will feel worse when hold (if the other dimensions and weight stay the same)
Good, though in practice it's not the charger the problem, I use the same USB plug everywhere, it's Apple and their cable. Right now I always need with me a micro USB cable, an USB-C one, and Lightning, because Apple thinks different™. What's Apple reasoning for not abandoning Lightning for USB-C on their phones?
I feel like there's bigger fish to fry. There's more and more li-ion appliances and tools, most with proprietary chargers (think all the power tools), and in many cases no user replaceable battery packs (e.g. vacuum cleaners). It really sucks that I need a new charger + battery if I want to use some bosch or dewalt tool instead of a ryobi or whatever I happen to have. And I can't use these tools' batteries to power U…
I think that's a lot harder problem, since there's a wide variety of needs that general batteries will have, vs smartphone chargers (and not even smartphone batteries)
USB PD isn't designed for smartphone batteries, it can power lots of things, including laptops, monitors, soldering irons, large power banks. Appliances' batteries are hardly any different from a power bank. There is no "battery smarts" in the charger itself, it just gives juice to a charge controller located by the battery. I don't know if it scales enough to be usable for 48V appliances, but a lot of stuff could be powered by a common interface (and, conversely, most large batteries could easily double as a power bank, and they indeed do if you just attach the right electronics downstream of it; having this built-in would be an interesting step).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
3.5mm headphone jack with hole drilled in midle carrying optical fiber would handle all use cases i can imagine. From delivering power, charging phones to connecting several 8K monitors. multiple protocols can use separate wavelengths of light, all at once in single fiber. Hundreds of gigabits are possible, maybe more, depending on the length. While still being able to connect wired headphones.
Yes, and superimpose signals on the power connection, I suppose. The only problem I see with this is that fiber optic cables are physically less robust (you can't bend them as much).
Pretty much, if you bend it too much, your connection will slow down temporarily till you straighten it again. That seems like a fine tradeoff.
Industrial fiber systems usually used fixed speed, so too much bending leads to a total failure of the connection - hence the strict bend limits on fibers.
Good, though in practice it's not the charger the problem, I use the same USB plug everywhere, it's Apple and their cable. Right now I always need with me a micro USB cable, an USB-C one, and Lightning, because Apple thinks different™. What's Apple reasoning for not abandoning Lightning for USB-C on their phones?
Remember the outrage among "normal" users when the Dock Connector was replaced by Lightning? Everyone was upset they'd have to buy new cables - even though Lightning was vastly superior. Now, there's hardy a difference in the form factor. And make no mistake - normal people don't have USB-C chargers and cables lying around.