This is a great discussion of all the ambiguity that has been added to the USB spec along the way and how that ambiguity can bite you. I'm fairly convinced at this late stage that the IETF motto of "precise in what you send, flexible in what you receive" is basically evil. When standards work around the non-compliance of clients in creative ways (like HTTP browsers did, A LOT) they become "well it isn't in the standard but if you don't do this you'll break a lot of things out in the field" problems. That resistance to breaking existing clients is understandable, but ultimately it is a trap (in my opinion) that results in both security issues and safety issues.
It would be interesting to have a USB 4.x spec that was both explicit in all the behaviors AND had explicit tests for and responses to non-compliant stuff. I don't think the IEEE or anyone else for that matter has the stones to try the experiment though.
The negative impact of Postel's suggestion ("be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept", AKA the "Robustness principle") is worse on end users than developers in cases like USB.
USB is silently super backwards compatible. This is really good in a pinch: I need to get the data off this drive and even if it takes six hours because I only have a USB 2 cable I'm better off than if I couldn't do it at all.
The problem is the opposite case for users: They have a fast USB-4 drive (potentially 40 Gbps) and a USB 4 laptop but pick up a USB-2 only cable. Hard for most people to diagnise, especially as such a cable won't have an e-marker so the laptop can't even query it. Or a slow charging cable for their device, so they fancy laptop doesn't visibly charge, or only charges overnight.
Even for me these cases are hard to diagnose. And harder to understand than, say, using an inferior cable with your monitor so you et no signal at all.
I recently threw out all of my USB-C cables that are longer than a foot but can’t charge at 100w, because I decided USB-C is a primarily a charging protocol, and I’ll use wireless, short cables, or Ethernet for data transfer and HDMI for display.
The matrix of charging + data speeds in USB-C is a nightmare and always resulted in having the wrong cable for the desired devices and usage.
I was going to ask how to test these things as I need to do some housekeeping too. I just found out about (and bought) a digital USB volt/amp meters. Here's an example. [0]
I just read this write-up [1], which clearly explained why the 65W USB C charging hub I bought doesn't necessarily enable "super fast charging" on my Samsung phone. Chargers and cables need to meet PD3.0 standard with PPS support to dynamically negotiate the volts and amps to maximize power throughput safely. Otherwise, you get auto-downgraded due to sticky default voltages.
The firmware on the unit is upgradable. While there's no guarantee that the manufacturer will (or can) add support for any given future standard, looking at the firmware changelog suggests they have at least some track record of doing this:
I've been thinking I should have something like this. Is this "the best there is" in this price category, or is there an even better product that someone here wants to recommend?
> Is this "the best there is" in this price category
That was my conclusion when I looked into this about a month ago, especially if USB-C is the main focus. I remember a reviewer pointing out some deficiencies on the USB-A front (compared to other, simpler, meters) but unfortunately I don't remember what they were.
Curious if this device you linked would also work to test things like the power bricks themselves and not just the cables? Would love to get rid of some low performing cables as well as the older power bricks.
Edit: Based on the description it does sound possible.
You could also just buy higher quality cables, right? The problem is usually that most consumers see two USB-C cables and one is $10 and the other is $50 so they buy the $10 one, only later realizing (if at all) that the $10 only does data, or only does 50W, or w/e.
But if you actually pay attention it seems like cables work as advertised with reasonable consistency, at least for me.
They may work as advertised, but the problem is that the cables themselves have no indication of what was advertised in the first place.
The ability to know what the cable you’re holding can do is just not there. Unless you have some way of ensuring that all your cables are the same, you need to:
- discard/donate every cable that you can’t identify (as @brookst did) by its eMarker (though they’re required by spec) unless you own a specialized USB-C voltmeter or multimeter
- manually label every cable with all its unique specifications, either after running it through an eMarker reader or immediately after taking it out of the box
It's an expensive solution, but most Thunderbolt 4 cables have markings and they support pretty much everything (Thunderbolt, USB, Alt modes, high-wattage charging, etc.).
Because Intel has a certification program for Thunderbolt that makes many things mandatory that are optional (for no good reason) in the USB-C spec: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28744448
The reason is that the USB-IF is owned/ run by the manufacturers and many of them want to be able to make cheaper gear (TBF mandatory high tolerances was part of the “problem” with the original Thunderbolt too, lo those many years ago).
This is also why USB-A is not symmetrical as was originally designed: to save money in the connector.
Most people who want 40Gbps can diagnose the issues, the rest will assume "Oh, it takes 6 hours, better plan for it, that's how it is". But it will work every. single. time. at those very slow 2.0 speeds.
What they should do is give a popup saying "You have a slow cable, it could be faster, go rummage till this message goes away and mark the good one with a sharpie", and that wouldn't need any changes to the spec
They've chosen reliability over quality. Cheap reliability is a great thing. We did fine before fast hard drives, we can often live without them. But we'll want to scream if we can't get it working at all.
> What they should do is give a popup saying "You have a slow cable, it could be faster, go rummage till this message goes away and mark the good one with a sharpie", and that wouldn't need any changes to the spec
I think something like this exists in Windows. I'm not sure under what conditions it triggers, but I remember occasionally seeing a tooltip saying something like "this device could work faster", directing me to plug it into a different USB port.
They did continue this for USB-C. My new laptop with USB-C charging port constantly whines that my new, after-market charger should be replaced by a $LAPTOP_MAKER charger to charge faster. The cable is theirs but the power supply is a multi-output charger instead of their original charger. At the moment I believe the problem is some sort of signaling rather than the capacity of the power supply.
I haven't seen that message in a long time, but I remember it being quite unhelpful as often there was no way to plug the device in to a port that made Windows happy. And no way to tell Windows you didn't care so stop complaining about stuff.
The only time I recall ever seeing this message myself was when I was writing USB device firmware from scratch. In my situation, the actual problem was that I had made a mistake in one of the Windows-specific device descriptors. So it’s possible that the device itself was wrong…
> go rummage till this message goes away and mark the good one with a sharpie
I dunno if I even have the right kind, or how to even shop for the right kind, because there are like 500 wrong kinds that are all wrong for a different reason =/
Basically I just look for Thunderbolt 3/4 support and if it doesn't have that, I give up, because who the heck has time to understand 4000 kinds of incompatible USB?
I wonder if you could start an online cables boutique that just sold tested and reviewed cables and cable management with a 50% markup for people who just don't want to deal with it.
Then you have to wonder about how to make sure the link doesn't 404.
And your store idea invalidates having cheaper devices and cables and a ubiquitous protocol.
The only good thing about USBC is that if you moderately keep up to date with all your devices, eventually, recharging becomes relatively easy for all your devices. I don't think I've ever had a problem charging a USBC device. Generally everything charges everything. The high power devices like laptops are probably the exception since you need a brick that can deliver 65-80W[1].
1. One reason why Apple Silicon is so appealing. The M2 Air is plenty fast and basically consumes the power of an iPad. You don't need a 30W supply to charge it.
Who's "they"? The operating system vendor? I don't think there is even a single go-to place/brand to buy certified USB cables. The entire ecosystem is a mess, and even ordering first-party from Microsoft/Dell/etc is no guarantee that you'll get the right kind of cable, and I doubt that any of their support staff knows the ins and outs. I don't think even the standards body members themselves can figure that out at home.
Thunderbolt is much cleaner but much more expensive.
50% ıs too low. Anyone doıng this should aim for 5000% and also shout everywhere how their copper is so much better than anyone else's that it's worth many times its weight in gold.
> I dunno if I even have the right kind, or how to even shop for the right kind
I don’t know if you can trust what you see on eg Amazon but “USB IF certified” should be a fully-spec-compliant cable. I’ve successfully bought cables on Amazon this way.
It’s annoying, but from research that’s the magic incantation to search for.
> What they should do is give a popup saying "You have a slow cable, it could be faster, go rummage till this message goes away and mark the good one with a sharpie"
I have a USB-C cable thay came with my monitor which doubles as video and power pass through. If I use thay cable on a Dell USB-C hub, my Pixel reports it can only charge slowly. Cable doesn't matter.
There is no way to tell what a good cable is ('good' brands included), or if the cable is even the problem.
I like your popup, but half the time it would result in the user finding/buying a fast cable, plugging it in, and getting a “this cable can’t support the power requirements of the device” popup. Maybe we can generalize the popup to just say “nope, try another one”?
HTML5 is strict too. But it is strict in a pragmatic way, which makes it much nicer to write and read. Instead of forcing authors to write verbose code to an exacting spec without errors, they allowed authors to take shortcuts and make errors. But crucially, then they rigorously specified how those shortcuts and errors must be handled in all cases.
It doesn't matter if all your angle brackets are in the right place or all your attributes are quoted. What matters is that all implementations do the same thing given the same input. You can be strict and achieve interoperability without punitive error handling.
I feel that this all could be stated as "the price of high compatibility is inconsistent performance."
Which, if I had to rank the two, I'd choose the compatibility easily. Users who actually have a need for 40Gbps transfers will either put the effort into getting the correct cabling, or they will quickly learn that lesson. The fact that they have a working option in a pinch is far more valuable then assuring they can't possibly make sub-optimal cabling choices.
The article has to go to great lengths to even try to make this point. I mean, sure, if you hack up an unlabeled USB cable into a PSU and then plug it into devices it wasn't intended to be used with you might fry the ports. Is this really a problem a "user" is likely to face?
I have a hard time considering any problem that can be solved by adding a label to the product "hard." If every cable was required to have the name of the highest-numbered spec it implements, e.g. "USB-4" or "USB-2.1", both of these problems would either become non-problems or, at least reduced to "go buy the correct cable."
Only if someone enforces that labeled cables are correct. While that is done in theory, I have a USBA to USBA cabel for some DVD drive, why wasn't the manufacture sued to recall all those devices (they don't claim it is USB they just use the USB connectors for their own protocol)
You don't have to license USB, you just need a VID. The USB-IF is planning to enforce some of the labels with trademark law, but (for example) for the Nintendo Switch Nintendo often didn't mention that the connector was USB-C, so that wouldn't work.
I tried using a power-only USB cable for data once, then tossed it back in the bin. Later, tried it again, back in the bin. I think on the 5th try, months later, I finally threw it away.
Also, Dial-Up/Ethernet pairs seem to be too complex? Each house I bring my Ethernet/wire Tester+Detector to, somewhere I find a rat's nest of copper cable. Just today I found an Ethernet cable that connects 4/8 to nearby the router, and the other 2 Pairs of wire terminate in a Dial Up cable in another room!?
Wow nice! I use multi-adapter cables for charging, but always thought the data rates on the enabled connectors would be shit. Happy to hear a review on a product like this that might help; gonna grab a pair.
Would not be surprised if there was an automated bot on HN and reddit et al that looked for comments like mine with reviews and did exactly that. Damn. Good point.
I bought a couple of multi-connector cables similar to the ones you have, but from a different manufacturer and no real specs on the packaging a couple of years ago.
They both charge whatever is connected extremely slowly, no matter what power supply or device. They can barely charge a phone overnight, and charging is so weak that if my phone is used while plugged in, battery net-drains instead of charging. Would've been better to buy cheap, separate charging cables and more power supplies to keep the different device-end connectors powered.
But to be fair, there were no specs when I bought them in a store, just claims that they can be used to charge different devices from USB, which they do, just surprisingly badly.
Those cables have one decent use. Charging while out and about with only an unknown USB outlet available. Perhaps something like the USB port on your airplane entertainment system. No data means no virus risk.
Until I need a USB C cable that can carry power and video for my portable external display and almost no random cable that you pick up supports it at all.
So I have to be extra sure that I have the right cable before I leave for a trip.
I'm sure the Quest 2 link cable is theoretically capable of that. However, given that the standard is such a mess, there's a decent probability that the display, computer, or cable won't trust another component and thus fall back to something much slower. It's also kind of hilarious that the Quest 2 needs a separate USB-C cable from the included USB-C charger to actually talk with a computer.
I've had an interesting SSD (SATA) drive failure last year that only my USB2 drive dock could read (fully, no isues)... couldn't access it using anything newer I had.
The problem isn't the philosophy but applying the philosophy out of context. I don't want my device to be "flexible" in what it accepts when we're talking about dozens of watts fed by amperes of current into my hand or pocket.
Like there's a reason that Speak-On (1) was invented. It turns out sharing a common connector for carrying power and signal can be fucking dangerous.
I've seen more than one XLR based cable go up in a puff of magic smoke, this is a nice industry response to a very real problem. Better yet if the problem isn't detected during a soundcheck. Whoever thought that using the same connector for microphones as for speakers was a good idea wasn't thinking clearly that day. Unfortunately there is still a lot of old gear floating around so you get this:
I've seen older stage monitors use powered TRS cables. I still see it in amp heads and cabs. Powered signals on exposed conductors. Better not touch it.
It's actually not that bad since the only thing on the other end is a transducer that's already rated for a lot of current. It's just rather dangerous to have powered audio signals on exposed copper so you generally don't hot swap the things. It's not so bad for amps since the cables are very short and inaccessible, but for stage monitors you can accidentally unplug it on stage.
I've been zapped by microphone stands more than once and seen one musician take a serious hit just after plugging in his guitar. Stage gear is handled quite rough by non-experts and there is a ton of wear on plugs and cables. Especially outdoor concerts can be pretty nasty from an electrical point of view.
> Speakon connectors are rated for at least 30 A RMS continuous current
1/4 is still used in places (I have not too old guitar amp with one), but main benefits are:
* No exposed metal
* Higher current rating
* Unidirectional. Can't put output to output.
* Locking connector.
Especially the last one, you don't want random pull to remove a connector easily, especially on events where you can't control everything going on.
The fact it's different than the rest is just cherry on top. Actually, with lower power (say tens of watts) you probably wouldn't even damage anything but speak-ons are near-ubiquitous on "big boy" stuff with few KWs of power
Haha I use speakon for charging + data of computer backpacks. Because they can have more pins than xlr, can carry decent load, have good strain relief and locking mechanism.
That's a little less horrible than XLR, because the common use of speakon is already a designated "You're on your own" protocol, since you have to verify yourself that the amp isn't too much for the speaker and you're not feeding it 80hz square waves.
I firmly believe that if every fucker designing those standards had to provide 2 different reference implementations (say 2 different languages so idiosyncrasies don't leak into design) plus full test suite for every feature we'd be with far simpler and better working standards, coz maybe someone will realize "fuck, this is hard to implement right, maybe we should rethink it?"
Instead it's yet another standard that looks like someone that fell out of the ivory tower outhouse.
> say 2 different languages so idiosyncrasies don't leak into design
Preferably, two different idiosyncratic languages. I vote Prolog and Snap! (BYOB). If you pick C and D, you'll get basically the same idiosyncrasies leaking in from both languages.
The Postel's suggestion works because it's profitable for the device makers.
Be strict at what you send, as much as you can. This maximizes the probability of your widget working with everything else. Be lenient in what you accept, and your widget will likely work with everyone else's widgets, even if everything else's ideas of the correct protocol slightly diverge.
Following the two approaches makes your widget more compatible than a strictly-adherent, inflexible widget your competitor might produce.
The more compatible your widget is, the fewer unhappy customers you have: it fails to work in fewer cases that a strictly-adherent widget would. It may not work ideally in every case, but it may work well enough for the customer to keep it, or even for you to deny a refund.
With low-price items like cables, it again plays into the cable maker's hand: all the various cables are okay because they demonstrably work (not "broken"), but now you can differentiate between very cheap cables that can do little but suffice in simple cases, and premium cables that offer high speed, high power, etc. You can put a cheap cable into a toy as a charging-only low-power cable and save the all-important few cents. You can charge $29.99 for a cable that can do it all™, for customers annoyed by cheap underperforming cables (which they also bought from you!), who decide to finally splurge on the real thing.
A world where there'd be one and only maximalist format, and where the smallest deviation from it would render a device / cable useless, would be (even) more painful for the customer, more expensive, and with some more preice-sensitive segments underserved. The variability that follows from the "be lenient to what you receive" corresponds to the need to serve many varied market segments.
Of these, I think the only one that can work solely because of an overly "flexible in what you receive" is the USB condoms, which shouldn't be encouraged in the first place. Specifically, that people wanted to charge at more than 100mA without doing real negotiation, so they ignored official USB specs came up with a variety of static or simpler negotiations that could be mimicked.
The un-negotiated 20V power input is a WTF and I've never seen that before, but the typical behavior from a port not expecting that is getting fried so it's not like anyone else is being overly liberal.
The extension cable works because basically all physical connections from the last 30 years or so are designed to still try to work at a degraded level with subpar signal integrity, because the world is analogue and you can't have a 100% perfect signal. The sometimes missing pins can't be required without breaking compatibility with pre-C ports that don't have them. Likewise, the male-A to female-C adapter can't really be distinguished from a male-A to male-C cable, so you can't prevent it from working without also blocking those cables.
IMO the real issue is the USB-IF stubbornly refusing to allow any legit versions of an extension cable (or I guess male-A to female-C) with active circuitry to make them reliable/safe. A hub allows male-A to male-A connections and length extension after all...
I think the solution to charging from an untrusted port is a power bank. Mine will pass through power to my device if the device needs charging. If not, it will recharge itself. It's also powerful enough to recharge a tablet and I think my M2 Air.
I bought the power bank from a well known brand, and I've tried charging it from different supplies. It seems to negotiate the power to charge itself correctly. And my devices just detect it as a power supply. It has wireless charging for phones too.
The right solution is not thinking about it at all. The only extant malicious chargers anyone has shown evidence of have been proof-of-concepts whose concept hasn't worked in nearly a decade.
If you're worried about purely theoretical attacks, you should also be worried about your power bank's firmware being infected from the malicious port and subsequently infecting your phone.
Like any connector that is mass produced it tends to be cheap and with good cables at very small price and thus people tend to use it for other purposes like the 20V input. Well as RJ45 used for serial connections, passive PoE standards that will put 24V on whatever you connect no matter that it can handle it, audio jacks used for analog video or even power, and similar stuff.
It’s not obvious that if a connector fits it will work!
Is it wrong? To me not, you have to be careful, just as you can plug a 3kW space heater with an extension cord with a 0.75mm2 cable and burn your house down you can use the wrong usb C connector (that will unlikely start a fire)
If IEEE does that, some manufacturers will just ignore it. Sure they may have to write weasel words like "USB compatible but not USB authorized" on their products, but they'll dominate the market by allowing people to use the largest variety of devices.
The simplest practical way around that (imho) is to license the name for the 4.x standard and be proactive in taking action against anyone who uses the name or logo if their cables or ports aren't compliant.
Of course, depending on the jurisdiction who can actually bring claims, and how damages can be calculated, vary greatly.
I, for one, wouldn't buy "USB compatible but not USB authorized" cables if it meant being secure in knowing that the damned cable will actually work. Less tech savvy people might not, but there's also people who can be tricked into buying blinker fluid for their cars. There's gotta be a happy medium somewhere.
> The simplest practical way around that (imho) is to license the name for the 4.x standard and be proactive in taking action against anyone who uses the name or logo if their cables or ports aren't compliant.
USB-IF promulgates the spec, licenses the logo and all that, they also have a suite of tests that manufacturers are to perform and submit to certify the devices. The problem is that not all manufacturers perform the tests or use the logo, so while it means USB is ubiquitous, it also has some weird behaviors in some devices that are compounded by the complexity of the USB C spec.
> "precise in what you send, flexible in what you receive" is basically evil
I think it's a matter of where you apply it.
For a purely software construct such as a network protocol, probably ok.
For something like negotiating current and voltage where making the wrong decision can melt a cable or fry a circuit board, as stated in TFA, obviously it doesn't fly.
I feel like you are making an assumption that your flexible implementation, or a single "wrong" implementation, becomes dominant.
If there are many implementations with differing amounts of perceived flexibility or wrongness in different areas, the average is going to be OK.
If misunderstanding a spec is so common that many implementers are universally confused and "wrong" in the same way, maybe it's the spec that was wrong, and the misinterpretation should have been the spec.
Ps. Phrasing this as "evil" contrasting with good reads to me as paranoid and melodramatic.
Unfortunately the flexible implementation has a better chance at becoming dominant as it will work in more cases hence user are more likely to adopt it. Users don't care about standards compliance in the short term (if ever), they just want a solution to their use case, which is understandable. Same reason Microsoft worked so hard to keep deviant apps running on newer versions of Windows, there's a quality to "it just keeps working no matter what I do".
The problem is that those implementations that do end up being dominant then factually constitute an ill-defined unwritten standard. There are just too many examples of this. So it’s good advice to not start being lenient, because you never know what ends up being dominant. As a sibling comment points out, being lenient in fact increases your chances of becoming dominant.
I agree with "evil" being melodromatic of a term. I was just using it for consistency.
Bad behavior being eventually codified into a standard because implementations were lax and it's impossible to go back on what everybody is now already doing is the story behind much of the modern web as it exists. HTML requiring closing tags for some elements, requiring a lack of closing tags for others, and leaving the closing tag still optional for yet others is a side effect of common browser behaviors.
You're right that many implementations with different wrongness smooths out the average in many cases, except when all those implementations are expected to behave the same way on the same bad data. Then they all converge to the same bad behavior, which then becomes the new standard. Perhaps that's organic and natural, but I still wish we had a world where HTML was strictly compatible with XML, or with any other structured and predictable format.
It created countless bugs in software precisely because it is easy to accept more but hard to make that bulletproof. Everywhere where security is of concern (which is pretty much anything that can be called by user) it is bad
And to be precise, it's "accept stuff that subtly wrong" that's the problem.
"Accept previous version of standard in addition to current one" can be completely fine.
And USB problem is really neither, it's just sheer overload of features and how most of them are optional so you never know what supports what
The best thing about USB-C is the connector. Everything else is a mess. I have a powered speaker with a USB-C port for “charging” that does not work with a USB-C to USB-C cable. Only USB-A to USB-C cables will charge the speaker.
This is a super common f*ckup in a truly ridiculous number of devices. It's so common that somebody published a PCB design to retrofit noncompliant devices to make them work: https://github.com/ide/usb-c-to-c-power-mod
Huh, TIL. My phone, gamepad, and headphones charge just fine with a C-to-C cable. I guess I’m glad to have somehow managed to avoid devices with that fuckup…
Offical cables to good devices, or reputable expensive brand vs ulta cheap nonames with logos one simply can't trust.
Never had issue with c-c cables neither, but I use tiny anker 65w charger and official samsung phone c-c cable (so getting ultra fast phone charging or whatever is the proper name), but its true that if I had to supply 3-4 locations with all necessary and convenient set of chargers and cables that would cost quite a bit. It really is one of those 'you get what you pay for', unfortunately very few people know this and I learned most of this here on HN too
I hate USB-C connectors. All my phones have had the same issue: USB-C connector busts and you can't insert the cable any more. I use high quality Anker cables, and I keep having to buy new Google Pixels over this. Replacing the USB-C port is around $160.
The connector on every phone I have ceases to work eventually not because the connector is broken, but because the socket has (sufficiently) filled with pocket lint such that the plug isn't able to reliably connect anymore. One just needs to remove the lint from the port. (And note that you won't see the lint by gazing into the port, either; it has usually been compacted into the bottom of the socket by the plug squishing it down.)
I just dig out my lightning port with a toothpick every time I wake up to find my phone didn’t charge. I have no idea how safe that would be with a USB-C port, which is literally the only reason I dread the otherwise obviously-good transition of iPhones to a standard port.
It should be safer with a USB-C port, since the springs (the most fragile part) are in the cable, not in the port; with lightning, the springs are in the port instead of the cable.
I've only seen two designs of magnetic USB cables. The most popular is round, and I've confirmed different manufacturers' tips/cables are fully interchangeable.
The other style is oval shaped, and those would obviously be incompatible.
And what's the worst that happens? I might eventually have to switch to normal, horrible cables, like you use every single day? Enjoy wearing out your cables and devices...
From my understanding, this violate the spec potentially connecting all the pins at the same time which causes some sort of spike in power which is bad?
I know the sibling suggested a toothpick, but everything besides a needle has been too large and too week in my experience. There's nothing important at the bottom of the port so just jam it in there and scrape around until you can get a bunch of lint out. You will be surprised what you find.
I use a safety pin. The amount of lint I get out is unbelievable. And I have to scrape hard to get it all out, it's extremely compacted. Don't stop until you hear the sound of metal on plastic.
Whittle the toothpick a smidgen with a razor blade or similar.
Metal scraping flimsy metal contacts that are nigh-unrepairable is a hard lesson. Unfortunately it is also one that I seem to need to re-learn on a consistent basis.
I have had luck with those disposable floss picks. They are entirely plastic and the pick stick end is suitably narrow to fit into the port. Plus they are incredibly cheap.
I do like the suggestions of plastic or wood; that's probably a better idea as the material is softer. My spudger doesn't fit a USB port, sadly. IDK if a toothpick would, I'd never thought of that.
I try to be mindful of the actual connector's pads when I clean, so as to not scrape them.
Username checks out ;) But seriously, yes, they are ridiculously fragile and usually only SMD soldered on, no hole through part to give it some mechanical strength. Very frustrating, I am super careful inserting USB-C connectors and have broken a couple already, fortunately not on anything expensive.
I haven't used anything like that, for me the problem isn't tripping over cables but basically the force required to attach the cable in the first place. I guess a magnetic pigtail would reduce the number of times I need to insert the cable but a regular USB-C extension cable would do just as well for that purpose (and that's what I use right now).
That's still not perfect because the 2 cm of plug sticking out of the side of the device is long enough to put substantial leverage on the soldered part inside the device but that seems to be a given. I do try to find the shortest possible plug to minimize that force, but can't find them much shorter than that.
Magnetic cables aren't spec compliant, and for good reason. It's way easier to mess up with the voltage connections and fry the usb c port due to stray metal and a lot more exposed to ESD. You should avoid using them.
I had something similar to that on my MacBook and ended up giving up on it. I frequently ended up tripping a soft-fuse or something and the port would stop working until I either put the MacBook to sleep or shut it down (I forget which). Once it started back up, the port worked again.
It was nice to have a "mag-safe" USB-C, but frustrating to have the port stop charging randomly - something I always ended up noticing when my laptop throttled down to a crawl as it reached near-0% battery.
This probably isn't your issue, but I've had issues in the past, usually with a cell phone that sits in my pocket, that show up as cables no longer maintaining detent and falling out. The issue was actually accumulated dirt in the bottom of the female connector. Scraping it out with a toothpick fixed it for me. Just a FYI.
i feel as though the port in the phone is male, and the cord side is female, since the part that actually "mates" goes into the cord, not the other way around.
when i started typing this i had a coaxial cable in mind as an example of "looks like female but isn't", although UHF/F come close. the "male threaded" part is not the male connector.
I'll second the "relevant username" sentiment, but without the winky face. I've had phones break in a variety of ways, but the USB-C ports have always kept working.
If you keep buying the same cables and they keep breaking things, they’re probably not high quality.
In my experience, Anker products are nothing short of garbage. Keyboards and adapters all break within weeks. I feel like all the “anker is the best!” stuff I see online is stealth marketing because I’ve had better results buying absolutely anything else.
I’ve recently been bringing my laptop to bed to watch TV with my pup, knowing full well I’m risking a catastrophic somethingorother. So far we’ve had good luck, most of my worry has shifted to what havoc will be wrought when I inevitably fall asleep and my pup has full unsupervised keyboard access.
Laptop fell off my bed recently and damaged the screen connector. I am having the screen replaced but Apple’s authorized service center says they need to wipe the drive. I will probably spend a few days configuring everything again. Such is life.
I have never once seen a USB-C connector fail device side. It's so far the most reliable connector I've ever used long enough to have an opinion, perhaps with the exception of US 120v plugs which suck for their own reasons.
I've had exactly one device connector actually die. It was a Nokia phone where there was a design flaw. The backplate had an indentation where the charging port was that was just a little too deep, allowing the cable to wiggle a bit in the port, damaging it more than usual and eventually killing it.
The flaw was acknowledged by Nokia. It was handed down by a phone upgrade addict though so I couldn't be arsed to try and make a claim for free repairs or something.
I've had a lot of cables die though, but mostly because I bought them at a gas station in "need to charge asap" type situations.
I spent a long time back and forth with Anker customer support on an inability to charge my Pixel 6 Pro with an Anker charger and cable reliably.
It turned out that if I used a non-Anker cable or a non-Anker charger, everything works fine. Anker were happy to send me replacements for things, but no only-Anker solution would work reliably. I bought a bunch of cheap generic brand USB-C cables and they work much better.
I've stopped buying Anker now, since there now seems to be no benefit over buying a generic brand.
Wow that sucks. I guess I should count myself lucky as I have gone the mostly-Anker route wrt cables and charges and haven't ran into this issue with my P6Pro, yet. I guess it's only a matter of time.
I've had two broken USB-C connected phones in the past, the Oneplus 3 and Oneplus 5. Both had their C ports on a separate flex cable, with the port itself screwed onto the aluminium back of the phone on both sides. I was pleasantly suprised by this, it is a really solid construction. I've never had a broken USB-C socket though, it's been the battery for both phones. I think the C port is the best mobile connector on the market ever from a physical point of view.
I only have USB-C on my laptop (MacBook Pro; you can guess my phone’s non-standard port), and I’m rather a clumsy person. I haven’t had any issues with anything breaking, but I’ve heard a lot about the risk. Some suggest it’s the port design itself to blame (eg wrong amount of snugness in either direction), others that it’s the hollow plug design. I imagine both are at play, but my hunch is the ports are more to blame than the plugs (thinness = excessive snugness). Despite this hunch, I wince every single time I notice the hollow plug, because it always suggests a more fragile part I can neither see nor safeguard.
It's a shame Apple won't open up the Lightning connector and let everybody use it. From a physical device connection and hardware failure perspective, it's actually better.
Lightning connectors only have eight pins, the other side of the connector has the gold plating just for the looks of it. The socket is monitoring both sides with flipped pin order, one side is always unused. It's a ridiculously wasteful design. I'm glad other companies can't use it.
The way USB-C works with adapters to legacy USB (USB-A and USB-B) is brilliant. Unlike in USB-C, in legacy USB the power roles are fixed: the USB-A socket and USB-B plug provide power (source), the USB-A plug and USB-B socket receive power (sink). A USB-C to legacy adapter always has a USB-C plug (never a USB-C socket), and one of these four legacy alternatives. If the legacy end of the cable is one which receives power (USB-A plug or USB-B socket), the USB-C end has a pull-up resistor to that power on the configuration pins, indicating to the USB-C device that this cable provides power; if the legacy end of the cable is one which provides power (USB-A socket or USB-B plug), the USB-C end has a pull-down resistor to ground on the configuration pins, indicating to the USB-C device that this cable requests power. The USB-C device only connects its power output to the socket when it sees that pull-down resistor, so the power supplies will not be shorted together if the cable always provides power to it. And the only thing necessary for an adapter, or for an USB-C device which only receives power, is a pair of resistors.
And this explains your scenario: in the USB-A plug to USB-C plug case, the cable always provides power on the USB-C plug; in the USB-C to USB-C plug case, the device on the other end will only provide power when it sees the pull-down to ground, which should be provided by the device, and in your case is probably missing.
If the 5.1k pull-down resistors are missing on the device side, it will not charge from a USB-C wall brick, laptop, etc. in either orientation, but it will work fine when charging from a USB-A outlet with a USB-A to USB-C cable. This is because USB-C outlets are not permitted to provide any power until they detect the presence of a "legacy" device that just wants 5v (as signaled by the pull-down resistors on the device).
The way USB C is designed you have to go out of your way to make that happen. I believe you (!) but I'm not sure how I could build a device to behave that way. Could it be due to a weirdly noncompliant power adaptor?
That device, the speaker in this case, is missing the pull-down (Rd) resistors on CC1 and CC2 to say that it's happy to get 5v@500ma when connected using a USB-C to USB-C cable. Those resistors aren't needed/used for signaling when using a USB-C to USB-A cable, which is why that works.
To GP's point, that's the problem with Postel's Law. It's possible that was intentionally skipped to save fractional cents, but I think it's also possible they made the device and just never tested with a usb-c to usb-c cable. "It works on my machine (which is too old to have usb-c ports because we don't buy macbooks for hardware designers)!"
I’ve got a pair of cheap Bluetooth headphones that do that too — they only work with a usb a to c cable, not with a proper usb c power supply and cable.
"When a Lightning cable is just lying somewhere connected to a charger/computer, but not connected to a device, HiFive limits current on the PWR to a really small value (around 10-15 mA according to my measurements). To enable full current, 0x74 request must be issued by Tristar and processed by HiFive."
When they were babies both of my kids happily chewed on lightning cables that were plugged into a charger. They're both still here but all of those cables stopped working shortly thereafter.
It has a number of connectors, the cable gets plugged into the board with both ends and labelled LEDs will light up for wires that are connected. It runs off a coin cell, no microcontroller, no single-board computer, no nothing. Just a power source, LEDs and connectors.
From what I remember, the creator said that the repo should contain everything required to have some manufactured by JLCPCB (that's a large Chinese PCB prototyping service that also populates boards with components if you like).
I had a recent brush with the chaos of USB-C. A device I built was using what I assumed was a "standard" 6-pin usb port (https://www.lcsc.com/product-detail/USB-Connectors_Korean-Hr...) - but it wouldn't work with the cheap usb-c cables I had bought for it. After a bunch of time with a continuity tester and ultimately ripping one of the cables apart, it turns out the it was a 6pin cable, but it had a different 6 pins connected. One of them was "left handed" while the other was "right handed". Maddening.
To help with this in the future, I recently ordered a run of these usb cable testers from jlcpcb with some friends - https://github.com/alvarop/usb_c_cable_tester - totally worth it to never have to guess about a cable again.
(for the curious, a technical description of what was happening: the cable had pins A1, A4, A5, B1, B4, and B5 all connected. The port had pins A12, A9, A8, B12, B9, and B8 connected - If you look at this in a pin diagram like the one on this page https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/01/usb-3-1-and-type-c-t... you can see that no matter which way around you put it in the port you'll never get contact)
The USB crowd has managed to replicate the decades old problem with DB-25 RS-232
cables.
I once worked in a data center where there was a rule that all cables over 1 foot long must have all wires and be 1:1. Any "adapters" were very short, labelled cables. USB-C is now there.
Is there any certification body that also has a list of certified usb products ?
I literally cannot predict if a cable can charge, transfer data slowly, fast or if it will fry my device.
I mostly want a *hard requirement for a specs label ON THE CABLE*. How else am I supposed to know what they are for? Even Apple is not labeling their cables.
Same physical appearance and no labeling is recipe for disaster
I wish USB would just go away. Even the most basic possible use cases just fundamentally don't work, and are becoming worse each year.
At least 10-15 years ago I was trying to copy data from one USB harddrive to another. I was already using my ports so I tried to do it through a hub. This was in the day where machines still had 3-4 ports, maybe even 5. But after my webcam and mouse, I was full.
I was poor and broke then and always had cheapskate hubs. It would always work but you'd have weird errors or crashes and finally one drive would stop responding midway through a 6 hour operation.
Now 2022 with a decent job I said it's time to properly experience USB and splurged on a well-known $100+ one.
Laptops in 2022 now have ONLY ONE USB PORT, both my Macbook and Huawei. The second port is for power. And? .... Yeah USB hubs don't work at all. Same crap. I was blaming my Xiaomi phone & Windows 10 for the fact I can't back up my photos .....for months. Nope it was the gdamn USB hub. And it's ALWAYS 100% OF THE TIME weird issues that appear in the middle of long operations inconsistently. The hardware involved never matters, Mac, Windows, cheap hub, fancy hub.....all TRASH
If you have TB3 and a thunderbolt dock you can get much more consistent results. I’ve been using a caldigit TS3 for almost 3 years now on a 2019 MBP with little to no issues, it remembers my monitors, I have a dac running out and lots of ports.
I don't understand this line of thinking. The purpose of those regulations is to reduce e-waste. How is the EU's fault if some companies produce cheap shit that doesn't work very well? And do you really think things would get better without those rules?
About USB-C to barrel plug connectors: I think people generally use a "PD decoy" board with that setup, which does Power Delivery negotiation (usually based on the cheap IP2721 chip but you can get a fancier one from ST) with a PD-capable power brick. This way you can easily get 5/9/12/15/20V out of a single decent quality GaN charger.
Now obviously you want to be careful with where you plug it in but it's still quite convenient.
A more advanced way to do this is use an arduino board that can negotiate arbitrary voltage in 20mV steps with a PPS-compliant charger, effectively giving you a tiny lab power supply (although you can't get under 3.3V and the chargers are still a bit pricy).
I am disappointed that the Anker 715 (Nano II 65W) cannot do 12V with PD, but for some reason it is not one of the standard PD voltages. I think it is capable of 12V with PPS, but I am not sure if the decoy cables support it. If you specifically need 12V with PD, make sure to check if your charger supports it.
Ah, this takes me back to that time I had to add a USB-2.0 adapter inline with an all USB-C signal chain in order for the operating system to recognize the device.
And that charger I have which is USB-C but only works in one orientation.
And those expensive OpenFlow/P4 compatible switches in the datacenter whose management interface is serial (as in RS-232), but the form factor of the connector is USB-mini.
I think there must be something fundamentally wrong with many of the USB-C / USB 2.0 adapters on the market. I've burned out 10 of them already, using them to connect my old trusty mouse (5V, 100mA). The mouse works fine (20 years after I bought it!) but the adapters only last a few months at most before they start intermittently disconnecting, eventually failing completely. I'm at my wits end with this because there is no mouse on the market today with the same form and button layout.
> before they start intermittently disconnecting, eventually failing completely
My phone had this problem. I went through several cheap USB cables over the course of a year, before finally realizing it's not the cables that were the issue (other than being cheap and easy to deform): the issue was caused by lint accumulated in the USB port. After scraping it out with a needle the issue went away.
The lint and dirt will accumulate over time, and get compacted in the port by the charging cable, making it very hard to spot, as it looks just like the back wall of the port would. Cheap USB cables will easily deform after being plugged a couple times, making them much easier to pull out - but this alone will not make the connection intermittent, even though it feels that way if you're not aware of the lint problem.
This is why I don't think that would change anything. I am more that certain Apple would abuse the standard to force the users to only buy its cables.
Edit: I know complaining about downvotes only solicits more but I am genuinely curious why two people thought this comment was so irrelevant to the discussion that they downvoted it. Only explanation is that they believe that Apple could do no wrong. Lol
> I am more that certain Apple would abuse the standard to force the users to only buy its cables.
Based on iPhones with Lightning connectors supporting USB C PD charging for years now as well as various iPads with USB C/Thunderbolt connectors supporting many "USB C features" such as docks with HDMI and USB A ports, I'm curious why you are "more than certain" that Apple would change this behavior in the future. Could you care to elaborate?
Yes because it’s not like Apple already has been shipping iOS based devices that support USB C that can be used with any USB C cable and supports all the relevant standards including video over USB C.
Also, Apple will be forcing all Mac apps to go through the Mac App Store any day now. Since it introduced the Mac App Store a decade ago.
Really, the day the iphone gets a USB-C connector will be a sad day to me. I hate that stupid male connector disguised as a female smd mounted in a board.
On top of bad usb-C, the chips used for Ethernet and HDMI are also overwhelmingly poor. Every adapter overheats, so hot you cannot touch it, even with a full metal case. We need a standards body to ban junk products designed to be unsafe and/or destroy your devices.
And likely not "illegal" (housefires notwithstanding...) but just in violation of spec (which is great when it scratches your itch, but obnoxious when some combo of device and cable won't do what you expect).
I know I’m biased towards hackaday but I think this series is one of the better ones they’ve ever done. The writing is tight and clear. You can tell Arya is an expert in the area.
Do standards organizations tend to release/sell/provide any sort of “test harness” that vendors can use to validate their implementations against? Some coworkers and I recently authored an open API standard to be implemented by external vendors, and the test harness we released alongside it was the single most valuable tool we could possibly have provided to speed partner integrations/catch problems early.
I have at least 2 USB C devices (a little Android-based retro game thing, and headband/headphones I use for background noise while sleeping) that do not charge off the USB C charger I use for everything else (which, is 60 watts since I want to to charge everything).
Drives me crazy. Whole point of USB C is to avoid shit like that. I'd rather shit devices still come with micro USB so at least I know they need an old charger.
For a while, I've been using a USB-C female to USB-A male adapter to connect my MagSafe charger to various old-school USB wall chargers. Somewhat surprisingly, this works perfectly; the charging speed is probably slower but I haven't noticed.
That said, I'm guessing this violates some specification or other. Ah, well, no explosions yet.
Holy shit. I do have to flip my Type C extension cable sometimes. This sort explains what is happening.
I would like to have really long cables (12ft+). That way I don’t need to bring a bulky extension cord with me when traveling. Has anyone found a way to make this work?
One thing I have always wondered about USB-C. Why is the OS not communicating more information about your cable? As I understood it, the type of cable is visible to the OS, so why does it not help to troubleshoot the problem?
Are there any competing connectors under development now? I personally wonder of the mechanical robustness of a device-side port that isn’t a pure female port.
USB is really terrible for many reasons. This article describes some of them, but it is worse than that. (I knew USB was bad; I did not know it was quite that bad!!)
I think for charging, there should be a charging only port, and for data, having separate ports which you can tell which physical port is in use, and perhaps RS-232 or MIDI would be good, than USB which is no good.
It would be interesting to have a USB 4.x spec that was both explicit in all the behaviors AND had explicit tests for and responses to non-compliant stuff. I don't think the IEEE or anyone else for that matter has the stones to try the experiment though.