Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

EU reaches deal to make USB-C a common charger for most electronic devices

engadget.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 1001 posts

Re: EU reaches deal to make USB-C a common charger for most electronic devices

#431

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

pornel wrote: post #91
2000UltraDeluxe wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea's nice. I'll still have about 30 unusable micro-USB chargers lying around, though.

Cables, not chargers. Your chargers are USB-A, and you can make them usable with an A-to-C cable. There are no chargers with micro-USB output port (USB never specified such thing). Micro-USB has been designed to make cables essentially disposable (and not meant to be hardwired into any device), because the more robust side of the connector is in the device's port, and the fragile side is in the cable.

> Micro-USB has been designed to make cables essentially disposable [..], because the more robust side of the connector is in the device's port, and the fragile side is in the cable.

In my experience, this wasn't true. I had both a tablet and a phone that had the charging port fail. If I didn't apply a constant sideways force on the cable, it wouldn't charge. Tried other cables to make sure it wasn't a bad cable, but still had the same problem.

Re: EU reaches deal to make USB-C a common charger for most electronic devices

#432

Post by mort96 »

Aerroon wrote: post #427
pkulak wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you own a tablet and a laptop, by chance? Maybe have 3 other family members, each with some combination of said three devices? That can quickly become a lot of household chargers if they are all different.

But the problem will still be exactly the same, because not all USB-C cables are created equal. We've basically set in stone a standard that is so varied that the standardization means nothing. And that's before you get into any component actually wearing out and giving you degraded performance on the device or cable.

But you can get an USB-C power supply and cable which can charge all of your USB-C devices.

Re: EU reaches deal to make USB-C a common charger for most electronic devices

#433

Post by outadoc »

maccard wrote: post #23
stewx wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue with the Nintendo Switch is that Nintendo designed their own faulty USB-C charging implementation rather than merely using the reference design. It's not a failure of the spec, it's a failure to adhere to the spec. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16706803

And how am I supposed to know that when looking at a device that has a USB-C port for charging, and the instructions on the charger [0] say "Nintendo Switch can be charged by plugging the AC adapter into the console's USB Type-C connector." [0] https://store.nintendo.co.uk/en_gb/-nintendo-switch-power-ad...

> New Annex (Part I): It requires that mobiles phones and the similar radio devices, if they are capable to be recharged via wired charging, are equipped with the USB Type-C receptacle and, if they also require charging at voltages higher than 5 volts or currents higher than 3 amperes or powers higher than 15 watts , incorporate the USB Power Delivery charging communication protocol.

Nintendo will have to get its crap together and properly support Power Delivery, the burden is not on you.

Re: EU reaches deal to make USB-C a common charger for most electronic devices

#434

Post by oneoff786 »

vilhelm_s wrote: post #412
Nextgrid wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still not a great spec if it's so complex that you can screw it up. I understand the complexity for data, but for power I wish it was as simple as power & ground wires and that's it. Compare that with USB-A where even cheap Chinese cables from the lowest bidder usually work (work well enough at least - you might get voltage drop but it will still charge if you leave it on long enough) because the spec is so simp…

USB-C is infamous for being complex like that, but I think the charging part is basically fine? People talk about the Nintendo Switch often, but I have never heard any _other_ example of something where the charging didn't work, so I think maybe it's a rare exception. (This is distinct from the "fast charging" mode(s?), which does seem to have compatibility problems. But in that case, the failure mode is that device…

I plugged my switch into my laptop and the switch started to charge my laptop. I thought it was funny.

Re: EU reaches deal to make USB-C a common charger for most electronic devices

#435

Post by delecti »

cmckn wrote: post #418

I kind of understand this from an e-waste angle, but why (as a consumer) do I care if different phones use the same cable? I only have one phone. Even if I get a new phone every year, unless I’m switching back and forth between iPhones and Androids, I’m not having to buy new cables. If I go to a public place, and need to plug my phone in, I can already do that regardless of the connector on the phone end. If a friend…

Agreed. I could probably be fairly called an Apple critic on most things, but I don't think Lightning is a problem in need of solving. It was great all phones migrated to USB on the brick, but the other end of the cable is less important as long as there are such a small number.

Re: EU reaches deal to make USB-C a common charger for most electronic devices

#436

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

D13Fd wrote: post #109
lekevicius wrote: post #14

As a European, I'm very happy. USB-A has been with us for over 20 years. It's only disappearing because of USB-C, and USB-C seems to have room to grow. I wouldn't be surprised if it will still be the most popular connector in 2035, and not just because "legislation stops innovation". Making sure there are no weird exceptions to a very good port is reasonable and good.

It does stop innovation in things like lightning and MagSafe. And it doesn’t fix the multiple charger issue either, because so many manufacturers don’t adhere to the USB-C standard that any combination of charger + cable + device has an unreasonably non-zero chance of not working or even damaging the device. So in the end we still have to have multiple chargers, but now we can roll the dice on which one works with or…

> It does stop innovation in things like lightning and MagSafe

I think avoiding "innovation" in the form of yet another connector is USB C's mission.

Apple just released a USB C to MagSafe cable, where is the problem?

Lightning isn't innovation it's pure vendor lock in complete with embedded cable chips to enforce it.

Any improperly designed device can damage other devices, suggesting it's somehow particular to USB C is specious.

Re: EU reaches deal to make USB-C a common charger for most electronic devices

#437

Post by Aerroon »

rbanffy wrote: post #94
tmhrtly wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Power and ground wires alone don't cut it sadly when you're dealing with much higher wattages. There needs to be a level of negotiation between the host and the charger to decide on a specific power (current & voltage) that both can support. In USB-A this was accomplished through a hodge-podge of different resistances applied across data lines, not officially part of the standard but just done by manufacturers. USB-C…

> I do agree however that the cable-labelling situation is awful. The new rules mention that and aim to fix it by demanding clear labels.

You mean the ones on the packaging?

Re: EU reaches deal to make USB-C a common charger for most electronic devices

#438

Post by est31 »

bluGill wrote: post #167
est31 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's good but usually a new standard is phased in for one or two models to gain experience with it and then increasing numbers of phones use it. If you require all phones to use it from day one, you lose that. You'd at least need an "experimentation" mechanism where the commission allows manufacturers to build different devices that represent a few percent of their sales.

Phones have been doing USB charging for more than 10 years now. USB-C was designed based on the experience, and is what most phones use already. Your point isn't wrong, but is is several years out of date: USB-C is already well past the few models to gain experience point and now moving to the late adopter part of the cycle. A phone without USB-C charging is as quaint as a phone with a rotary dial at this point.

USB charging, yes, but USB-C is not used for that long. We might have USB-D in the future. I doubt that it's the end of technological development.

Re: EU reaches deal to make USB-C a common charger for most electronic devices

#439

Post by Aerroon »

jayd16 wrote: post #409
maccard wrote: post #7

The problem with USB-C is that you can't just pick up a device cable and power brick and expect them to work together. As an example, my Apple 96W USB-C charger doesn't charge my nintendo switch. The cable that came with my phone doesn't charge said fully Mac when used with the 96w charger. There is no indication of incompatibility between these devices until you realise they don't work. This is going back to the dc…

>you can't just pick up a device cable and power brick and expect them to work together I never understood this sentiment. That would be even more true if USB-C wasn't the standard so I don't really understand the complaint. Obviously "same shape" isn't an indicator that it will "just work" for USB-C, so why would we expect that to be the case for anything else with modern complexity? It would be nice if fits == work…

The previous chargers did work that way though.

Re: EU reaches deal to make USB-C a common charger for most electronic devices

#440

Post by Zababa »

cmckn wrote: post #428
pkulak wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you own a tablet and a laptop, by chance? Maybe have 3 other family members, each with some combination of said three devices? That can quickly become a lot of household chargers if they are all different.

As others have pointed out, even if all these devices have a USB-C hole on them, the likelihood that you could actually use their charger with another device (especially of a different class) is at best a coin toss. The devices still have to ship with chargers, you still have to find the “right” charger, but now you can’t tell them apart? My main thought is just that the problem of different chargers is not one I thi…

> the likelihood that you could actually use their charger with another device (especially of a different class) is at best a coin toss.

I've been able to use all my USB-C chargers for all my USB-C devices. That's 4 chargers and 4 devices.

Post reply on HN