USBC has done something truly amazing. You used to be able to tell within reason what the capabilities of USB were by the connector or the color of the port. Now there’s dozens of options and there’s hardly anyway for you to tell what cable and port support what features.
Maybe your port and charger can throw out 20 volts at 3 and 1/2 amps. Maybe you can throw out 20 volts at 6 amps (dell) maybe your device doesn’t negotiate correctly and they say to only use an a-c cable
Don’t get me wrong, I love the port. Multidirectional, doesn’t really wear out, does have a tendency to get a little dirty though. Lightning was a little more forgiving on dirt.
Labeling on the ports are all vague labeling on the cables is non-uniform or not existent.
But, truth is they probably come up with half a dozen specs for USBC that half your it doesn’t support. And they’ll probably come out with God knows how many more before they Make a new connector.
I don’t agree with the good ol’ days, beyond the blue connectors of USB3, there was no way of telling if a cable was charge only or data+charge. No way to tell if it was USB 1 or 2. If it was standard 0.5 amp or “fast charge”, up to 3 amps. There was a lot of different plugs, regular, mini, micro, A and B types.
Oh for fuck’s sake. So that’s newer and has more bandwidth than USB4 gen2 and gen3, right?
At least we got away from the USB 3.x where 3.0 and 3.2 Gen 1x1 were the same thing, despite 3.0 and 3.2 having a 9 year gap between them so you kinda expected 3.2 to be faster, but it was only faster if it was an x2 flavor, so 3.2 gen 1x2 was the faster version (extra lane for data) of 3.0 and 3.2 gen 2x2 was the faster version of 3.1 I guess?
Whoever at USB-IF is in charge of this versioning needs to take a long walk off a short pier.
It was extremely easy to determine if a cable carried data. If there were four wires/metal strips at the end it had data. If it was only the two fat ones it was power only.
Yeah, but at least you’re not sol when you’re at an apple house with an android device at 10% battery any more. If you need a cable with very specific capabilities that’s on you to do that research imo. The alternative is making every cable more expensive when most people don’t need it.
i hate apple with a burning passion but at least their cable lasted more then 3 years without wearing the port down to where you need to angle the connector with force or it doesnt charge
Would have been nice for some kind of forethought on a labeling system.
But there’s so many combinations now of power, data, audio, and video, and sup glasses of thunderbolt, display port, HDMI. Even if you put a 4-digit code on every cable listing exactly what they support people would never be able to understand and track down backward compatibility.
I’d be surprised in the next port change if we don’t end up with some fiber optic in there.
What bothers me is all these testers assume you are a USB hardware wizard and know which pin combo supports which USB standard.
I want something that tells you how fast and how much power the wire can handle.
The newer cables have chips to talk to chargers to not exceed the power ratings. Why can’t these chips or testers also tell you how fast the wire can handle?
I thought I was smart going back to a video that featured two USB C cable testers. I onky watched the video and didnt check or paid attention what the brand was.
And you’ll never see it on an Apple product, though you’ll never find an Apple product that isn’t supporting the full standard it’s still a problem when you’re trying to find a cable and aren’t sure if you’re using a real Apple one or a lookalike.
Dollar store keyboard cleaner air cans are good for this. There really should have been a little spring-loaded flap on the connector, like later SPDIF has.
A mechanical cover would have been good. Hell, even a rubber dust boot attached at one end would have been useful.
I keep a little deox-it around and use wooden toothpicks dipped in it. Pocket lint, and dust seem to collect on the left and the right on the ports and make them feel like they’re loose.
I had one the other week that was really bad I ended up digging it out with a dental pick. The phone had gotten wet and it was slowly making diy concrete down in there. But yeah much better to rely on air or not conductive tools, any to scratch off the protective plating
When you look at the amount of people and corporations behind a spec like USB… and no one thought of this? I wonder if there are IP67 USB-C connectors?
I suspect it was give and take. Lightning was a very, very slim port, but didn’t have enough pins/shielding to do high speed. C has a boatload of pins, great shielding and picked up dual sided, but the hole needs to be thicker to do this.
Other than a rubber flap on the outside of the chassis, I can’t think of any way to protect it from the inside that wouldn’t either impede plugging in or wear out quickly.
Just picture a rectangular plunger plate with a hole in it that sits over the wafer inside the receptacle. Then when you plug in, the plunger is pushed back. Tiny springs push it back out.
I know just enough to know that something like this is more complex to engineer than you want… It’s awfully small, it needs to move freely even when crudded up, it needs to not impede plugging in, etc
Of course this won’t protect 100% from ingress, just reduce it.
It would also be interesting to make the port something like a sim tray. you could eject it and replace it with a new one for a couple bucks. You might only replace it a handful of times, enough that the internal sealed contacts wouldn’t wear out.
Serious question, has no one developed a standard to color code USB-C cables? Even if it’s not something we can get manufactures to implement, I think I’ll try to come up with something.
It’s not a bad idea. There are a limited number of colors you can adequately use due to color blindness. And a lot of different spec options, but I think you could certainly do better than what we have now.
coloring or otherwise marking the string relief on the cable would be truly useful.
Coloring the ports themselves would be problematic as the blade is wafer thin and needs to be ultimately durable.
Well, that covers my phone, but then 45 watts won’t run my laptop, and if I plug in my phone and my laptop, they only get 22 watts each.
Then the cable: Can it be used for data transmission? What speeds does it cover? Will it transmit data through a DisplayPort or HDMI? If I unplug it from the power and plug it into the USB-C on my monitor, will I get video?
There are so many features, and it’s not like you can just go ohh I’ll get this USB-4_g cable and know what it does. Even the webpage for the Rundhult has no mention of what features are supported other than 100w.
The whole spec is complicated AF. You could spend $100 on a brick/cable that can do either 100W or high speed, but if you only need part of the equation, you can spend $30 on a brick and cable. What they support is almost never enumerated, even on the packaging.
If I ever need a new one for such an extremely specific task, I´ll make sure to spend a few minutes to make sure I buy the right one. Takes a minute, but easy!
The Ikea one says it only supports 480Mbps, so that´s a no-no for video. Sad, but easy!
lol, no it’s not easy. You saying “easy” doesn’t mean it is in any sense of the word. Like the person you’ve been responding to before said, usb c can support many things and not support others. For example, USB C cables can literally be unidirectional! That sure isn’t listed because it’s assumed to work bidirectionally, but it’s not a requirement. I literally have a unidirectional usb c cable in fact.
Just cause it says 480 doesn’t mean jack when
You weren’t talking about this cable originally, you were making a claim about a cable that literally wasn’t mentioned in the article. I gave an example of a cable that directly disproved your comment in a facetious manner.
No consumer should be expected to know usb c standards (that’s literally the point of this conversation)
I was the one that mentioned the 100W Ikea cable as a cheap example to combine with that charger
Too bad if someone doesn´t want to know the tiniest bit about standards. They´ll have to get help if they don´t want to read the packaging or symbology. Meanwhile the rest of us can enjoy hooking up our phones to our laptop chargers or monitors without having to waste resources on unnecessarily complex cables
If you want to do something fancy like hooking up to your monitor, you´ll have to use the unusually sturdy cable that came with it or take 2 minutes to read about which cable you need
So what happens when your laptop is pulling more than 22w?
Let’s say your cable is 5G. Guess what, that doesn’t mean it supports display port or thunderbolt.
These cables all have ID chips in them that tell the systems what they do and don’t support. 1 they just can’t be bothered to put it on the packaging, 2 a lot of the cheapest Chinese cables have their chips set incorrectly.
The one cable for all solutions problem is a great idea. They could just standardize on a 240 watt 40/60 cable and sell it everywhere that would be great. Hell, I’d be satisfied if there were two cables, 240/5 with black connectors and a 65/60 with white connectors.
USBC has done something truly amazing. You used to be able to tell within reason what the capabilities of USB were by the connector or the color of the port. Now there’s dozens of options and there’s hardly anyway for you to tell what cable and port support what features.
Maybe your port and charger can throw out 20 volts at 3 and 1/2 amps. Maybe you can throw out 20 volts at 6 amps (dell) maybe your device doesn’t negotiate correctly and they say to only use an a-c cable
Don’t get me wrong, I love the port. Multidirectional, doesn’t really wear out, does have a tendency to get a little dirty though. Lightning was a little more forgiving on dirt.
Labeling on the ports are all vague labeling on the cables is non-uniform or not existent.
But, truth is they probably come up with half a dozen specs for USBC that half your it doesn’t support. And they’ll probably come out with God knows how many more before they Make a new connector.
I don’t agree with the good ol’ days, beyond the blue connectors of USB3, there was no way of telling if a cable was charge only or data+charge. No way to tell if it was USB 1 or 2. If it was standard 0.5 amp or “fast charge”, up to 3 amps. There was a lot of different plugs, regular, mini, micro, A and B types.
I agree with everything you say about USB-C tho.
It wasn’t better, but it was readable. I don’t want to go back, I want them to fix what we have now to be readable.
Here’s an idea, all C cables supporting any level of PD must have the specs stamped on both plugs.
I’m down with it, but it’s a lot
Wattage/transferspeed/displayport/thunderbolt/PD
Even the current icons don’t tell you more than speed these days
Oh for fuck’s sake. So that’s newer and has more bandwidth than USB4 gen2 and gen3, right?
At least we got away from the USB 3.x where 3.0 and 3.2 Gen 1x1 were the same thing, despite 3.0 and 3.2 having a 9 year gap between them so you kinda expected 3.2 to be faster, but it was only faster if it was an x2 flavor, so 3.2 gen 1x2 was the faster version (extra lane for data) of 3.0 and 3.2 gen 2x2 was the faster version of 3.1 I guess?
Whoever at USB-IF is in charge of this versioning needs to take a long walk off a short pier.
I gotta say the usb versioning thing is gotta be the most confusing mess. Its hard to understand.
Terrible news for all my USB-C cables less than 2 & 1/2 inches long!
:) yeah good point & thanks for the pic
That is a lot of space for very little info, that means nothing to anyone who doesnt already know what th codes mean. U4.2.40 would be just as useful.
This is the programmer art of graphic design.
Yeah. It was already happening circa USB3. It’s not because of the connectors, but the broadening spectrum of requirements of client devices.
Maybe USB-C was a missed opportunity to address it, but it certainly didn’t “start the fire”.
It was extremely easy to determine if a cable carried data. If there were four wires/metal strips at the end it had data. If it was only the two fat ones it was power only.
Nah, I just checked the USB Micro B cable that came with an older handsfree, all strips present but doesn’t carry data. So no standard.
Yeah, but at least you’re not sol when you’re at an apple house with an android device at 10% battery any more. If you need a cable with very specific capabilities that’s on you to do that research imo. The alternative is making every cable more expensive when most people don’t need it.
I’m looking forwards to when my in-laws upgrade their phones and no longer get to use their “superior” lightning ports
i hate apple with a burning passion but at least their cable lasted more then 3 years without wearing the port down to where you need to angle the connector with force or it doesnt charge
I’ll be honest, in a vacuum and as a charging cable, lightning is kinda okay and the durability is pretty good. But I much prefer USB C any day
To solve the issue of identifying the capabilities of the cable: CaberQ.
Though a bit expensive for what it is.
Would have been nice for some kind of forethought on a labeling system.
But there’s so many combinations now of power, data, audio, and video, and sup glasses of thunderbolt, display port, HDMI. Even if you put a 4-digit code on every cable listing exactly what they support people would never be able to understand and track down backward compatibility.
I’d be surprised in the next port change if we don’t end up with some fiber optic in there.
https://caberqu.com/home/20-43-c2c-caberqu-746052578813.html#/27-with_or_without_case-with_case It’s not awful for price but there are more complete testers like treedix: https://treedix.com/
What bothers me is all these testers assume you are a USB hardware wizard and know which pin combo supports which USB standard.
I want something that tells you how fast and how much power the wire can handle.
The newer cables have chips to talk to chargers to not exceed the power ratings. Why can’t these chips or testers also tell you how fast the wire can handle?
The CaberQ can do exactly that.
https://caberqu.com/home/39-61-ble-caberqu-0611816327412.html#/31-hard_shell_case-with_case/32-screen_protector-with_screen_protector/34-240w_40gbit_s_usb4_cable-with_usb4_cable
I’d buy one but they are sold out.
Turn out there’s even an app for Android and iOS. I was wondering how you got all that information in one screen shot.
I thought I was smart going back to a video that featured two USB C cable testers. I onky watched the video and didnt check or paid attention what the brand was.
They are, in fact, these exact two brands.
Hopefully this will help
I saw that one back in the day. Never seen any of it in the wild yet.
Would be nice to get TB/DP on there too.
And you’ll never see it on an Apple product, though you’ll never find an Apple product that isn’t supporting the full standard it’s still a problem when you’re trying to find a cable and aren’t sure if you’re using a real Apple one or a lookalike.
Apple sells 60 and 240 watt c-c cables.
The 240 watt are only 5g
The cables are unlabeled.
They sell beats brand too, they are unlabeled to their speed.
One day usb-C will be able to do my taxes and walk my dog
Dollar store keyboard cleaner air cans are good for this. There really should have been a little spring-loaded flap on the connector, like later SPDIF has.
A mechanical cover would have been good. Hell, even a rubber dust boot attached at one end would have been useful.
I keep a little deox-it around and use wooden toothpicks dipped in it. Pocket lint, and dust seem to collect on the left and the right on the ports and make them feel like they’re loose.
I had one the other week that was really bad I ended up digging it out with a dental pick. The phone had gotten wet and it was slowly making diy concrete down in there. But yeah much better to rely on air or not conductive tools, any to scratch off the protective plating
When you look at the amount of people and corporations behind a spec like USB… and no one thought of this? I wonder if there are IP67 USB-C connectors?
I suspect it was give and take. Lightning was a very, very slim port, but didn’t have enough pins/shielding to do high speed. C has a boatload of pins, great shielding and picked up dual sided, but the hole needs to be thicker to do this.
Other than a rubber flap on the outside of the chassis, I can’t think of any way to protect it from the inside that wouldn’t either impede plugging in or wear out quickly.
There’s def some need there.
Just picture a rectangular plunger plate with a hole in it that sits over the wafer inside the receptacle. Then when you plug in, the plunger is pushed back. Tiny springs push it back out.
I know just enough to know that something like this is more complex to engineer than you want… It’s awfully small, it needs to move freely even when crudded up, it needs to not impede plugging in, etc
Of course this won’t protect 100% from ingress, just reduce it.
Any reduction would be great.
It would also be interesting to make the port something like a sim tray. you could eject it and replace it with a new one for a couple bucks. You might only replace it a handful of times, enough that the internal sealed contacts wouldn’t wear out.
I like that but you have to replace your phone every year anyway so…
yeah, i’m foolishly hoping we get away from that
Serious question, has no one developed a standard to color code USB-C cables? Even if it’s not something we can get manufactures to implement, I think I’ll try to come up with something.
It’s not a bad idea. There are a limited number of colors you can adequately use due to color blindness. And a lot of different spec options, but I think you could certainly do better than what we have now.
coloring or otherwise marking the string relief on the cable would be truly useful.
Coloring the ports themselves would be problematic as the blade is wafer thin and needs to be ultimately durable.
Ikea PD-PPS charger + Ikea 100W labeled cable = done.
Well, that covers my phone, but then 45 watts won’t run my laptop, and if I plug in my phone and my laptop, they only get 22 watts each.
Then the cable: Can it be used for data transmission? What speeds does it cover? Will it transmit data through a DisplayPort or HDMI? If I unplug it from the power and plug it into the USB-C on my monitor, will I get video?
There are so many features, and it’s not like you can just go ohh I’ll get this USB-4_g cable and know what it does. Even the webpage for the Rundhult has no mention of what features are supported other than 100w.
The whole spec is complicated AF. You could spend $100 on a brick/cable that can do either 100W or high speed, but if you only need part of the equation, you can spend $30 on a brick and cable. What they support is almost never enumerated, even on the packaging.
Your laptop will charge at 22 or 45W. Easy!
Cable will work for data at usb 2.0, as it says on the packaging. So it won´t work for video alt modes. Easy!
My monitor has an input cable that allows for maximum video resolution and maximum power delivery. I never need to take it out. Easy!
Which cable are you talking about? This one supports data and mentions nothing about alt modes. https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/rundhult-usb-c-to-usb-c-black-white-20581106/
The one that came with my monitor. Easy!
If I ever need a new one for such an extremely specific task, I´ll make sure to spend a few minutes to make sure I buy the right one. Takes a minute, but easy!
The Ikea one says it only supports 480Mbps, so that´s a no-no for video. Sad, but easy!
lol, no it’s not easy. You saying “easy” doesn’t mean it is in any sense of the word. Like the person you’ve been responding to before said, usb c can support many things and not support others. For example, USB C cables can literally be unidirectional! That sure isn’t listed because it’s assumed to work bidirectionally, but it’s not a requirement. I literally have a unidirectional usb c cable in fact.
Just cause it says 480 doesn’t mean jack when
You weren’t talking about this cable originally, you were making a claim about a cable that literally wasn’t mentioned in the article. I gave an example of a cable that directly disproved your comment in a facetious manner.
No consumer should be expected to know usb c standards (that’s literally the point of this conversation)
480 Mbps has nothing to do with supporting video. This Reddit thread explains it way better than I can, but support for a feature in the cable has absolutely nothing to do with data transfer rate. https://www.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/ji87mc/usb_32_gen_2_typec_monitor_compatibility/j5dohy5/
I was the one that mentioned the 100W Ikea cable as a cheap example to combine with that charger
Too bad if someone doesn´t want to know the tiniest bit about standards. They´ll have to get help if they don´t want to read the packaging or symbology. Meanwhile the rest of us can enjoy hooking up our phones to our laptop chargers or monitors without having to waste resources on unnecessarily complex cables
If you want to do something fancy like hooking up to your monitor, you´ll have to use the unusually sturdy cable that came with it or take 2 minutes to read about which cable you need
So what happens when your laptop is pulling more than 22w?
Let’s say your cable is 5G. Guess what, that doesn’t mean it supports display port or thunderbolt.
These cables all have ID chips in them that tell the systems what they do and don’t support. 1 they just can’t be bothered to put it on the packaging, 2 a lot of the cheapest Chinese cables have their chips set incorrectly.
The one cable for all solutions problem is a great idea. They could just standardize on a 240 watt 40/60 cable and sell it everywhere that would be great. Hell, I’d be satisfied if there were two cables, 240/5 with black connectors and a 65/60 with white connectors.
Then you need a more powerful charger!
If you really keep tumbling into these kind of situations, you need to a) read up on what you buy or b) get advice from a trusted seller. Easy!