EU passes law mandating USB-C compatibility for phone chargers

boing
42

I have a Gemini PDA which has one USB-C port on the left side and another on the right side of the case. It came with a notice in big friendly letters saying that one should never, as in NEVER, plug a power supply into the USB-C port on the right side, and that connecting a display to the USB-C port on the left side will not work.

As Andrew S. Tanenbaum famously said, “the nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from”. In particular, the USB-C standard basically governs the mechanics of the connection, plus there are some stipulations as to how USB connections (as in USB 1.x, 2.x, 3.x, …) are supposed to work. So far, so good, but there are extra pins available on a USB-C connector that – at the device manufacturer’s discretion – can do other things (like carry HDMI or DisplayPort-type signals for connecting a monitor) and it is basically impossible to tell from looking at a USB-C port which combination of optional extras it supports. (There is a set of funny symbols that manufacturers can place beside their USB-C ports in order to tell people more, but they are not exactly intuitive and not universally used, either.) Then there is the additional issue that not every USB-C cable is suitable for everything that could come out of or go into a USB-C port.

All in all, USB-C is nice (the fact that it no longer matters which side of the plug is up is a major convenience) but it seems to create as many new problems as it solves.

6 Likes
43

Also, although I am not sure if this applies in this situation, licensing fees can be a nice tax loophole. You can claim that you trade at a near loss in a high tax country due to the darn licensing fees you simply have to pay to a sister company located a tax haven.

4 Likes
44

I’ve got a socket set like that in my 1-year old new build house kitchen. It was already obselete when installed, because it doesn’t support the smart charging (or turbo charging) that modern phone chargers are capable of, so we always plug chargers into the standard household sockets.

1 Like
45

I will never plug my phone into a random USB port set into a wall, and neither should you. Not without a USB condom, at least.

3 Likes
46

To harp on someone besides Apple, it looks like this legislation will also put an end to proprietary fast charging protocols, which I will also cheer on. I’m already almost at the point where I can charge everything with the same charger as fast as possible (the one remaining USB micro port is on my ereader, which I don’t mind too much since I can go for over a month without charging it), and I’d like everyone to join me in this glorious single charger utopia.

1 Like
47

What percentage of people use the USB port for anything other than charging? I have wireless charging, so I don’t even use it for that. Maybe someday the USB port will go the way of the headphone jack (on some devices, at least).

49

I used to think that about broadband - why use wireless when you can plug in? But I can get wireless from my modem with mains repeaters in other parts of the house at rates that do not throttle the broadband supply.

What is the issue with charging? Does the cost of the energy equal the cost of the gadget? A conventional car will cost about as much as the petrol you put though it at about 70,000 miles. That is usually a sign that the car has had most of it’s conventional life - you can keep it going but repairs may get more expensive.

I suspect many of the chargers are cheap, and not as efficient as they might be. The physical connection means having a hole in the side of the case with a connection from the plug to your phone’s circuit board. Wireless charging could mean having a phone with a completely sealed case. You might not need to open it to put in a SIM if it could simulate that. If that might save your phone when it falls out of your shirt pocket into the toilet, then you are well ahead whatever the inefficiencies. If the wireless charger talks to your phone, it could put itself in low energy mode, so it could be more efficient then cheap USB-2 charger.

Don’t get me wrong: we should think about the cost of energy, but also the cost of stuff too. I have heard it said the energy cost when leaving a USB-C charger plugged in but unused is less than the energy cost leaving your car idling for one second. I charge using a USB-C cable, so I am not hyping cordless. But it might be a win in the bigger picture.

Meanwhile my hair clippers and craft tools charge from USB-2. My next electric toothbrush will probably do the same.

50

A lot of points here, but none of them addresses the main one I made - wireless charging is, simply due to physics, less efficient. 85%-90% of what a cable does is the most it can manage theoretically, and is therefore a generous figure. In many cases it may be as low as 60%.

For an individual phone that’s not a problem, but when we’re looking at the level of entire countries you’re basically talking about millions of adults with phones, all of whom are now requiring more power to charge their phone. That must surely add up.

Not having any ports does not mean it’ll be sealed well enough to be waterproof. Waterproofing means sealing with rubber gaskets or similar.

My last five phones - almost a decade’s worth - have been waterproof. (Four Sony phones, one Samsung.)
Early ones had both a Micro-USB and headphone jack, plus a sealed tray for a SIM card and micro SD card. Later ones just had a USB-C port and SIM tray. There’s an additional cost for waterproofing a phone, but being portless is plainly not strictly related to waterproofing, so I don’t think that’s a consideration.

What I’m really trying to get at is that if wireless charging becomes commonplace for phones, other devices will follow - tablets, cameras, whatever. That will only extend the additional power demand the technology brings.

Even if we’re using 100% renewable energy, reducing our power draw is still a good thing. Fewer energy generators (be they solar panels, wind turbines or wave energy extractors) need to be built, if nothing else. On that point I also wonder which is better for the phone’s environmental impact - a port, or a wireless charge receiver coil? I honestly don’t know. I veer towards the port being less impactful, as it doesn’t require a big copper coil, so should require fewer materials. But again, I stress I don’t know. It would be interesting to hear from anyone who does.

The mantra of being eco-friendly is “reduce, re-use, recycle”. We focus too much on the latter one and not enough on the former two.

I simply have a feeling if in 10 years time wireless charging is the norm, then in 30 years time we’ll be thinking of it as a mistake…

2 Likes
51

To clarify one point there- wireless charging requires more space in the device. You need a really large inductor inside the phone (efficiency of energy transfer is dictated by this, so the larger the better) and it’s actually pretty difficult to fit that in there. It’s a shape that phone makers hate- fairly thin but very large in diameter. That means it necessarily has to stack on the battery and screen, making the overall phone thicker. A port can be along side other components and “tetrised” in wherever there is room. Wireless charging also means the back has to be plastic, not any kind of metal, which also makes durability and waterproofing goals more difficult to hit.

7 Likes
52

Useless with a tablet too. If your tablet consumes more than 1.0 A, you probably can’t expect to use and charge the tablet at the same time.

53

If you’ve standardized on a wireless charger that’s 66% efficient, there’s really no need to research a more efficient technology, given that any more efficient device will break the standard.

(The audio company that makes my speakers has recently introduced a super expensive headphone that can only be used as long as the non replaceable battery lasts. The price boggles the mind, the built in obsolescence is cherry on the cake)

54

That’s not what happened, though - they switch to USB-C chargers and provided a USB-C to lightning cable to connect to your phone. Today right now, I can charge my iPhone with any usb-c charger anywhere, I just need to have the cable it came with to do that. This doesn’t help one whit with power adaptors. At all.

Apple will presumably switch to USB-C, just as they did for the iPad, and ten years’ worth of “made for iPhone” accessories are about to become useless. At least this will accelerate the end of cable-connected peripherals entirely since it will take years for lightning-enabled devices to filter out of the market, so this regulation will probably mark the beginning of the end for physically-connected devices overall and drive the adoption of wireless charging/comms/etc.

4 Likes
55

I will never plug my phone into a random USB port set into a wall, and neither should you. Not without a USB condom, at least.

Why not?

image
image675×900 57.2 KB

/s

11 Likes
56

Angry Zapp Brannigan GIF

3 Likes
57

But the issue isn’t what’s on the power brick end of the cable. The issue is what’s on the device end of the cable.

I have one USB-C cable at work which I can use to charge my phone, my headphones and my tablet. But my work on-call phone is an iPhone, and I need a second cable just for that. And only that.

Which, frankly, is a little annoying. If only because Lightning cables also appear to have a predisposition to go walkies as other people discover their iPhone is low on battery. :wink:

I wish Apple had given us the option of USB-C - I would have picked that if they did. If they go wireless, I will probably request an Android phone when my on-call phone needs replacing as I don’t want to have to buy an additional wireless charging puck/carry one to and from work just for that one device.

2 Likes
58

Lucky you-- I need usb-micro b, lightning, and usb-c to charge my things. It’s more than a little annoying. My microphone still uses mini-B, but it doesn’t recharge.

Still, do cables really count as e-waste? Are things really being consigned to the bin, just because they demand the wrong cable?

2 Likes
59

Honest question, were you serious or pulling their leg?

I am using a C-to-C charger since 2017, and the new phones anyone around me purchased since then either had one of those in the box - or made a point of NOT having one in the box. [ETA: a charger, at all. Because everyone now has a shoeboxes full of them.]

Might be, but they will be next to a socket with USB-C.
Or a coffee shop with one. FTR, far more public charging points I’ve seen since a couple of years had a C port than a lightning port. Which is not surprising, to me.

Oh, is that the case? I had an original iPod, an iPod touch and an iPhone a long while back… I definitely remember being cross that I had to take multiple cables. And when the Macbook Pro I used in 2018 finally hat only USC-C form factor ports, I was like: yeah, Apple FINALLY understood the problem. (Then, I tried to connect a 4K display, and wanted to charge using the same cable…)

Looking at that, e.g., the ARTEMIS project could not be connected to an ARIANE rocket, that sentence is a teensy bit of a joke in itself.

Don’t get me started…

404×438 13.9 KB

2 Likes
60

Now you mention it, the very first iPod may have had an IEEE 1394 (Firewire 400) socket. It certainly used Firewire at the other end, so it wouldn’t have worked with the same cable and power brick as every other pre-2011 iDevice. Ironically, that would make it the only one that did use a standard connector, which is why it didn’t work with Windows PCs, since almost none ever supported that failed standard.

You’ve also reminded me that the earliest iPods Nano used a different connector – built into the 3.5mm headphone jack – as they weren’t big enough for the 30-pin socket.

2 Likes
61

I do have a few devices which use a USB-Micro B cable, but they’re not ones I need to charge daily or even regularly. Portable speakers with an 8-hour battery, a charging brick I occasionally carry for emergencies… I have plenty of cables for those anyway, as my previous phones used them. Maybe at some point I’ll run short of those cables but if so I doubt they’ll be expensive to replace…

Frankly, before the move to USB C those micro-cables were pretty much the de facto standard already, with rare exceptions (and Apple).

I also have printers and microphones which use standard B cables, but again they’re not worth mentioning as they’re pretty much permanently connected.

The cables are more of a network effect thing. When there was no standard the cable connector was often proprietary and therefore the whole charging unit was single-use. Damage to the cable or the unit required replacing the whole thing (unless you wanted to risk your own repairs.)
The move to USB-Micro B meant that it was actually better for manufacturers to put a cable in separately rather than to fix it to the charger. They could save pennies by providing shorter cables, and those cables are a commodity item so design and procurement are much easier - good all round for the manufacturers. And for customers it meant a broken cable only required discarding the cable, not the whole charging unit. Plus they could buy the right length of cable and use that if they so desired. So very early on the practice of fixing the cable to the charger pretty much disappeared, and good riddance too!

1 Like
62

LOL, love this bit at the end!!! :laughing: :rofl: :joy:

2 Likes