Quote:
Originally Posted by BillGaitas
Millions of laptops out there use USB-PD for charging and it should be the norm outside of power hungry machines like gaming laptops or workstations with professional GPUs (to which the EU directive doesn't mandate USB-C).
Everything should use USB-C. The chargers only provide what the device asks for. People ought to learn a bit about USB-C and USB-PD before wishing everything went back to absolutely terrible barrel plugs and proprietary connectors like lightning. As for me, all of my devices use USB-C and I'll hapily charge everything with a single cable and charger. Been doing so for years and absolutely nothing broke.
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I've been using laptops since 1998.
Using things with "barrel" plugs, (coax power plugs and some rectangular) for much longer. They can be good or bad design and some have a lock.
Designing portable electronic gear for decades.
Most of what you say is nonsense. USB-C has its uses but it's simply ignorant to suggest it's good for everything. Also like every other version of USB it has stupid features and flaws.
Already there are multiple incompatible charging schemes and a new spec for more than 100W.
Also Digital Video or Analogue Audio support is a minefield and poor specs even when you buy the gear mean you need to test to discover which charging scheme the USB-C uses, does it do USB 3.0 or is it USB 2.x, is Analogue via connector supported, is video directly supported, can it charge rather than supply power in OTG host mode if a gadget (some micro USB gadgets/tablets could), can the USB-C host on a Laptop work as client to link two laptops for file transfer (some can), if so is MTP, Mass storage or RNDIS networking used.
On most ereaders the USB-C does nothing that the robust mini-USB or more fragile micro-USB didn't do.
The only USB 3.0 speed devices I have are 3 x external drives and an HDMI capture device.
No USB-C tablet, phone or ereader even gets close to the limit of USB 2.0 speeds.
We have two laptops that can charge on USB-C, but they charge faster when in use using the coax power connector.
The Nintendo switch needs its dock to charge on USB-C or output video, though oddly the the USB-C on it does work with a 1Gbps USB-C ethernet.
The TCL Nxtpaper11 is advertised as fully supporting USB-C. It can charge and be a host (direct gadgets, but Kobo eReader only via a USB hub (3.0 or 2.0), mysteriously the USB 2.0 USB-A DVB-T stick works direct with adapator or via a USB 3.0 hub but not any USB 2.0 hub, even ones that work for it on a Laptop or PC). It doesn't do analogue audio or HDMI via USB-C adaptors. It also used Qualcomm charging protocol, so a USB-C charger only charges at 0.5A. It can use a USB 2.0 USB-A cable to charge at 20W from a Qualcomm compatible charger.
Hours of testing needed to discover what's possible.
Yes, USB-C is sometimes more use than earlier USB versions, but it's a mess and not the answer for power on everything. It doesn't automatically mean USB 3.0 or even as high speed as USB 2.0 and may be no different to mini-USB (which had OTG and options for analogue audio and analogue video) or micro-USB (which had options for direct HDMI out, OTG and self-charge while in host mode).