The reversible USB Type-C connector is turning heads at CES

http://www.arnnet.com.au/article/563392/reversible-usb-type-c-connector-turning-heads-ces/

by drewjaja • 12 years ago

51 70 12 years ago

arnnet.com.au

ferrari86082• 12 years ago

"A third benefit of Type-C is that it can deliver greater amounts of power -- up to 100 watts. That means you should be able to charge something as big as a laptop via a USB cable, as well as the phones and other small devices you can charge today."

How awesome would it be to not need a dedicated power port on your laptop? In my experience with repairing laptops, that's one of the first things to break if you're keeping the thing plugged in constantly. It gets old disassembling the entire machine just to J-B Weld or solder the female end back in place. Then there's the idea that you may eventually be able to charge your other internet devices with the same cord you charge your laptop with. You get a cord with every device, so that means you'll have backups ready if your main charge cord breaks or disappears. This just seems like an all-around Good Thing.

Alphasite_• 12 years ago

I'm a little worried that if these get made to the same standard that most usb cables are that one of these is going to kill someone.

dogma1138• 12 years ago

That's 20V over 5amps that won't kill anything... Lenovo and some other companies already charge their laptops via USB (Normal A Type connector) on a dedicated port that connects to a 65W power adapter...

mieses2• 12 years ago

They are very safe. Toyota uses them for cabling around compressed hydrogen fuel tanks.

crdoconnor2• 12 years ago

This would also be a great way to standardize DC power delivery throughout buildings:

http://www.economist.com/news/international/21588104-humble-...

This would allow for more efficient use of solar power and batteries. Instead of converting DC from the panel/battery to AC and then back to DC again (losing a lot of power in the process), you could run a lot of appliances directly off a DC power network with USB connectors.

UrMomReadsHN7• 12 years ago

Plugging your phone or laptop into a random usb slot into a wall to charge it isn't safe from a security standpoint. Since data flows with power, it is very easy to load up some malware while charging or steal data from the device. Unless I am misunderstood about what the article is proposing. It would be a nightmare if the only way I could charge my phone was to plug it into rouge usb ports. It is a security nightmare.

it isn't like this is some sort of far off concept.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/44038933/ns/technology_and_science...

guidedlight• 12 years ago

It appears that the next MacBook Air will feature power charging via a USB Type-C port (the only other port on the laptop is a 3.5mm audio jack).

http://9to5mac.com/2015/01/06/macbook-air-12-inch-redesign/?...

toothbrush2• 12 years ago

Omigod is anyone else freaked out that on the pictures the power button is where the ESC key should be? My boss has a habit of giving us Apple hardware on which i have a habit of installing Linux or whatever, but that keyboard would require some seriously ugly scripting to avoid reprogramming my muscle memory :/

pervycreeper• 12 years ago

I wouldn't give any credence to anonymous hearsay.

If those mockups end up looking like the real thing, I'll eat my iHat.

vidarh• 12 years ago

If only they end up being more solid than current mini and micro USB female ends. It's ridiculously easy to end up bending the female port sufficiently out of shape to get poor connection with the smaller USB ports - I have several devices that will only charge with specific cables that fits slightly snugger than average. There's also an ongoing problem with cables where the male end is not deep enough / set far enough back, so again many devices won't work with all cables.

Looking at pictures here [1], it looks like the housing may be just as liable to poor/cheap implementations to end up with the same issues as micro-USB.

[1] http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/08/small-reversible-usb-...

joezydeco• 12 years ago

I've had the same problem.

Half the things my kids got for Christmas charge off Micro-B cables and almost all the cables and/or ports are damaged already. Yes, they're cheap chinese knockoffs, but even if they were more robost I don't hold out much hope for Mr Busy Travelling Businessman relying on this cable to run his entire laptop system.

xmodem• 12 years ago

I wonder if the increased power capacity is implemented by the device and power supply negotiating a higher voltage. 100w at 5 volts would be 20 amps, which seems a bit high.

desdiv2• 12 years ago

Yep, a higher voltage is negotiated. At 100W, it's 20V:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#Power

ryanobjc• 12 years ago

About time. The usb physical standards have sucked, and hard. Mini usb tended to break on the device side, usb3 micro usb foot print is obscene etc.

lsaferite6• 12 years ago

Oddly, I never once had a failure of a Mini cable or receptacle. Micro is a horrid design though.

janus24• 12 years ago

In connection with this article, according to 9to5mac the next MBA should have a unique USB Type-C connector.

http://9to5mac.com/2015/01/06/macbook-air-12-inch-redesign

emeidi• 12 years ago

The spelling mistake with "connectors" (plural) confused me. After looking at the linked web page, I now get what you wanted to say:

The 12" MacBook Air is rumored to have ONE SINGLE USB PORT and NO other peripheral port (except a headphone jack). 9to5 claims it will be a USB Type-C port. Take with a grain of salt.

maxerickson• 12 years ago

The great thing about releasing a computer with 1 port is that when you release the next version, you can trumpet how it now has more than 1 port.

I wonder if something got lost in translation there, "only usb 3" is an interesting thing to do, and "only usb 3c ports" isn't that far off from "only a usb 3c connector".

makomk• 12 years ago

Another benefit that this doesn't mention is that it can support DisplayPort connections at the same time as USB and charging.

MichaelGG• 12 years ago

According to Wikipedia, alt modes include DisplayPort, MHL, PCI Express, and Ethernet. I really hope USB doesn't make the terrible mistake of exposing an insecure protocol like PCIe over a "public" port.

With FireWire, I could just destroy the port physically since I didn't use it. But if USB gets the Apple treatment of giving DMA access to anyone that can get a peripheral connected to your machine -- well, that'd suck.

techrat• 12 years ago

After the recent publishing of how Apple Macbook Pros with Thunderbolt ports can be bootkitted ... Yeah, knowing that USB 3.1/C can provide PCIeX/DMA access to the system is a touch worrying.

csabia2• 12 years ago

About time. USB + DisplayPort + Ethernet + power (- PCI Express) is wonderful.

lsaferite6• 12 years ago

USB + DP + Ethernet + USB-PD?

I haven't seen that mentioned. Do you have a link?

Do you just mean that you could have an attached USB <-> Ethernet adapter while DP alt mode is active?

I've read that DP mode is possible in conjunction with USB-PD and USB 3.1 but have seen nothing about Ethernet in particular.

csabia2• 12 years ago

In this article (http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/01/usb-3-1-and-type-c-th...), they hint at the capability called "Alternate Mode". It can be used to transport any non-USB data.

organsnyder3• 12 years ago

I'm incredibly excited for the possibilities of this connector. Imagine a laptop that has a bunch of USB Type-C ports—and nothing else. Plugging a (universal!) charger into any of them charges the laptop at a rate of up to 100 watts. Displays are connected via DisplayPort-over-USB, etc. In fact, the display could actually be the charger as well (or, if you have a desktop, the display could be powered from the PC). A single USB Type-C cable could run an all-encompassing, manufacturer-agnostic docking solution.

Phones would also feature the same connector, so a laptop charger could also charge a phone, with no adapter needed.

I'm really looking forward to having a single connector for virtually all of my devices (excluding special situations, such as water-resistant devices) within the next few years.

StuffMaster• 12 years ago

Unless they changed the protocol, USB will always be undesirable for transporting video and network data. Not that you can't, but thunderbolt is much better suited.

benbristow• 12 years ago

MiniUSB was far better than MicroUSB. I can't count how many MicroUSB devices I've somehow broke (maybe it's just me). Always the tongue that seems to snap.

Thankfully wireless charging is now becoming more and more popular.

USB Type-C still has a tongue whereas Apple's new connector port does not; and Apple's is still reversible. Shame they patented it.

lsaferite6• 12 years ago

I'm with you here. I hate micro and loved Mini. I've bought and tossed more Micro cables than I can count. And if you are rough on the device you widen the port just a fraction and get crappy connections that you have to wiggle to get working.

Also, the Apple connector style is far nicer and it is indeed a shame it's patented and limited to Apple devices.

tomkinstinch• 12 years ago

Having designed some analog electronics, it continues to amaze me that cheap USB cables costing on the order of pennies are capable of carrying GHz-rate signals over a couple conductors, despite not being coaxial. There are so many opportunities for loss and noise, it is incredible it works at all. And it works well. Imagine if we had to use a double(or triple)-shielded coaxial cable with BNC connectors to connect our monitors and high data rate devices. The USB spec is amazing. USB-C finally brings decent usability to the connectors.

lsaferite6• 12 years ago

I haven't been able to find anything saying how many wires are in the cable, does anyone here know and have a reference?

Is it the full 24 wires mapped end-to-end or are some of the connectors mapped to a single wire? Like, the 4 USB 2.0 connectors, I imagine it makes little sense to have 4 physical wires there, right? Yet they obviously have the SuperSpeed lanes wired separately because they can run DP alt mode on one side of the connector and USB 3.1 on the other.

I'd love to see something discussing this and it could affect the longer term viability of the physical connector spec.

EDIT: Honestly, I'd love it if the spec said they must have 24 wires AND that balanced pairs would be twisted pairs. As long as the connector is durable I'm willing to pay more for a good cable designed to that spec.

The reversible USB Type-C connector is turning heads at CES

Related Stories