Wtf was the point of that pointless dumbass Brexit situation if they’re just going to piggyback off everything the EU does anyway?
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UK Considers Adopting USB-C as Common Charging Standard
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The USB-C specification mandates a minmum current of 900mA at a voltage of 5V. This is sufficient power for my Nokia 3210 (2024).
I just hate that little switch in the UK. The amount of times I plug in my phone to come back to it not being charged because my wife grew up being told to switch it off on the wall everywhere 🤣 So glad we are moving to the Netherlands so she can no longer do that
It's a pretty damn good port to be honest.
24 Pin
Reversible
80Gbit/s
Load of power options - Capable of 100 or even 240w (48 V, 5 A)
We've had USB-A for over 30 years... I think USB-C will be the standard for the next 30.
As for the UK... they have to make a standard or the manufacturers will carry on with proprietary sockets or inferior alternatives. Not really for phones / tablets but all the other devices... torches, toothbrushes, Shavers, security cameras, etc. So a copycat standard is a good thing... adds another 70million people to the pot
Agree it's a good port but the government absolutely shouldn't be mandating it. Now no one has any incentive to develop a better one.
The problem with mandating PD I you've now increased the costs of devices, cables and chargers. For high end stuff that is fine since the cost is a tiny fraction of the overall costs; but for cheaper devices it could make the economically unviable.
I suspect plugs are doomed for higher end devices as wireless charging, wifi and bluetooth are eliminating the need for them for many users. As those get better and faster the plug may be viewed like the old land line phone.
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More despicable government overreach. Unfortunately, it will be supported and cheered on by those who see business as the great enemy, and excessive government as the savior.
It is if/when wireless charging becomes cheap and easy. It is when certain devices may become popular to the point of near-ubiquity but still require a big wart on them just to accommodate a USB port.
You mean these plugs that usually come without a ground wire?
Everyone would love standardized power plugs, but sadly that will never happen.
The installed base is just too large and the industry has already designed all their products with this issue in mind, so the benefit would be negligible. The different plugs are mostly annoying for travelers but beyond that, humanity survived pretty well.
My guess is that this will only go away when power plugs as such will be superseded by some future technlogy like some hypothetical lossless wireless technlogy or maybe some future USB-D/E plug as the one ring to rule them all.
This thread should be sane and sensible.
Though, I wonder what the point of leaving the EU was, if the British will write up legislation that matches the EU's anyways. Guessing some folk in London wanted to feel more important?
Though, I wonder what the point of leaving the EU was, if the British will write up legislation that matches the EU's anyways. Guessing some folk in London wanted to feel more important?
that is the issue, right now and that is the reason, apple just has thunderbolt, simple and plain, all thunderbolt 3 cable perform the same, all the thunderbolt 4 cable perform the same. that is what you get when you have tight control. Its an headache to get a thunderbolt cable other than apples and expect it to live upto all listed specs.
So they are not compliant USB-C devices. Par for the course for the cheap Chinese junk that is filling Amazon and is an environmental disaster.
Apple was clearly moving to USB-C without the government getting involved.
FWIW I also don't think USB-C is actually better than lightening for anything I use the phone for, outside of the convenience of all my other tech using USB-C. Which is very nice, to be clear. But not worthy of a government mandate - especially when that mandate means we're stuck with the government-chosen winner forever.
640k ought to be enough for anyone, right? Less flippantly (I know the context of that quote makes it not an exact answer), this is not a binary choice between proprietary everything and one-size-fits-all-for-the-next-4-decades, both extremes are untenable.
There are already electronics (and phones) that are thinner and smaller than the USB connector itself.
There is a reason the US is landing rockets vertically bringing the economics (and macroeconomic ecology) to seriously innovative levels and Europe is being left behind, far behind in innovation. The US is far from perfect and doesn't necessarily have the best in everything, but they have shown to be very effective in fostering innovation. So, here's my bet: you'll be able to charge your antiquated phone anywhere across continental Europe in 2060 using the same charger you use today. We'll not be using phones by 2035 in the US, China, SE Asia in general, etc because our governments aren't stuck in meddling in the little things that don't actually matter economically, ecologically, or otherwise.
That being said, I think government has an important role in ensuring industry remains competitive, ecologically responsible, etc, and this includes e-waste and consumer experience. But mandating a specific technology doesn't fit into that workably IMO.
I'm definitely not a car expert, and I think we're getting wildly off-topic here.
To my knowledge pretty much all mass-produced "world" cars nowadays are built using a platform. Apparently the electrical Fiat 500 is just one iteration of the "STLA City" platform, from which a whole range of quite similar cars are or will be derived.
So the decision is not anymore to build one car for a specific market that requires "right-hand drive", but rather to design a platform with that feature.
Given the huge market for RHD cars in general, I have no doubt that nearly all major volume car platforms of our time support this feature. Especially for small, relatively cheap vehicles like a Fiat 500 that could possibly be sold in an even cheaper iteration in "irrelevant" poor countries in the very near future.
For details about why the Fiat 500 was built and marketed in the UK, I have no idea whatsoever.
Explain how this was clear?
They had shown no signs of moving the iPhone to USB C. The Mac and iPad had had it for years.
When Greg Joswiak says 'we'll have to comply' that sounds like a company reluctantly complying with a regulatory mandate
No it doesn't.
Is the iPhone getting the smart connector from the iPads? how about the Mac? The i/o on one piece of hardware isn't an indication that it is going to be implemented elsewhere.
iPad got USB in 2018, first Mac was 2015. iPhone 14 shipped with lightning in 2022.
Even with a platform that was developed with right-hand drive conversions in mind, often for more markets than just the UK, that is true, there's much to make differently.
But the conversion used to happen even before recent mega-car-corps that use one platform for multiple models of multiple brands worldwide, when they knew they could millions, just from the UK.
Yes, we are going off-topic with this...
And it is why the UK might need to act. So that we do not get vast amounts of such junk when much of the rest of the world bans it.
It made it clear to me. Just like how all 3.5mm jacks will go, everything will eventually be Face ID, the 10th gen iPad replaced the 9th once the 9th dropped out of the lineup. Etc etc.