You won't find these symbols on most devices though (certainly not on any macbook as the picture suggests).
By removing the symbols they were able to shave the case down 0.0003nm, making it the thinnest and lightest laptop ever.
Courage!
Stunning and brave!
How brave!
If they etched the symbol they could have reduced the weight of the laptop by 0.003g making it even better
But if they omit the symbol entirely, they save 0.003 cents per unit, but they will continue to charge the same inflated retail price for it and all their cult members will cover for them by gushing about how sleek the "minimalist" design is.
You know itās a thunderbolt connection on a MacBook. They stopped using the USB symbol when they used the usb for thunderbolt and stopped using the mini display port.
I didn't take the image to be showing a macbook, it could just as easily be my computer or probably many others.
It could be, but combine the color looking very much like Apple's space grey, the slimness of it, particularly how slim the lid is versus the body, and what looks like the MacBook's classic black, rounded rubber stoppers on the bottom, I think it's safe to say that's meant to be an MacBook.
Also certain MacBook models tried to go to a single USB C port about a decade ago, and it was on the corner like that.
True, my latest Dell laptop has 3 "usb-c shaped ports", there is 0 symbol anywhere close to them or the underside cover, you're on your own as to what it supports, you have to find the doc online somewhere I guess.
I discovered that my Thinkpad apparently supports charging from all of the (unlabeled) USB-C ports after I inadvertently started it charging from my cell phone's (unlabeled) USB-C port.
I can do you one better: My GPD laptop has a charging indicator on the center type-C port indicating that this is where the power supply goes, but it can actually be charged from either port regardless of the icon. Both ports are USB 3.0 or 3.2 or whatever the current fast standard is this week, but only the center one supports video out via an external GPU enclosure. So if you want to use it docked with an eGPU, it's actually required to not plug the power supply into the port that says you should plug the power supply into it.
So not only is the marking meaningless, it's arguably worse than meaningless because in one of the headline hardware setups for the machine it is actually 100% incorrect to do what the marking is telling you to do. Wrap your head around that one...
Tbf my work Dell Latitude 5440 has a USB A with a SS5, an A with a SS5 and charging indicator, a C with a thunderbolt indicator, and a C with a battery and a thunderbolt indicator.
So at least some of their laptops do in fact have the indicators similar-ish enough to what the infographic shows.
my 5680 has absolutely nothing. Checking online I found that the right one is a usb-c 3.2 and the 2 left ones are TB4. IIRC they all support DisplayPort and all support being used as the power input (165W charger), not sure for PD and fast charging a cell/tablet...
With some devices, I assume that they're trying to save a bit of money.
With the MBP, I'm pretty sure that they just don't want to disrupt the designer's vision of the aesthetic.
Have the thunderbolt symbol on my HP Laptop.
Why would you need them on a MacBook? They're always* Thunderbolt.
Edit: Better explained by GamingChairModel below. I entirely forgot one series of MacBook, and also forgot when the older ones did have the Thunderbolt symbol on them.
The only devices that don't have at least Thunderbolt 3 on all ports do use the Thunderbolt logo on the ones that support it, except the short-lived 12-inch MacBook (non-Pro, non-Air). Basically, for data transfer:
If it's a 12-inch MacBook, the single USB-C port doesn't support Thunderbolt, and only supports USB 3.1 Gen 1.
In all other devices, if the ports are unmarked, they all support Thunderbolt 3 or higher
If the ports are marked with Thunderbolt symbols, those ports support Thunderbolt but the unmarked ports on the same computer don't.
For power delivery, every USB-C port in every Apple laptop supports at least first generation USB-PD.
For display, every USB-C port in every Apple laptop (and maybe even the desktops) supports DisplayPort alt mode.
It's annoying but not actually that hard to remember in the wild.
I completely forgot the 12-inch one existed.
Okay, the old ones that apparently have both do have the Thunderbolt symbol on the ones that are, though, so what's the problem?
It gets even better, each function of the port also needs proper support from the cable. Often cables do not support the full spec of usb to cut costs.
While the symbols in the post are often put on computers, for usb cables this is seldom done (only a few brands do).
Source: had to find a cable that supports both DP and PD to connect a portable external monitor after I lost the original cable. (1/9 cables worked)
Yes, this is incredibly annoying and it's also the reason why some USB cables cost more than others, even they may look the same superficially.
One of those cables that don't work is rated for like 120W, with gigabit transfer speed... But it refuses to transmit display.... Like bruh
1080p at 60 Hz is 4.4 gigabit
Didn't really think about that one but you're right damn... (Looked it up, and it depends on the bit depth etc, but it's around 3.2Gbps for the display settings if I'm correct)... So that explains a lot
Gigabit is capable of like 720p@30Hz which it probably should be able to fall back on, but I understand why they wouldn't do that haha. 1080p@15Hz is also possible :)
USB-C video is usually DisplayPort Alt Mode, which uses a completely different data rate and protocol from USB.
Even using old 2016 hardware, a computer and USB-C cable that both only support 5 Gbps USB (such as USB 3.1 Gen 1) can often easily transmit an uncompressed 4K 60Hz video stream over that cable, using about 15.7Gbps of DisplayPort 1.2 bandwidth. Could go far higher than that with DP 2.0.
Some less common video-over-USB devices/docks use DisplayLink instead, which is indeed contained within USB packets and bound by the USB data rate, but it uses lossy compression so those uncompressed numbers aren't directly comparable.
That sounds like a dedicated charging cable. So yeah, they will (if at all) only transfer data slowly and not support any extras features like displayport.
A dedicated charging cable wouldnāt have āgigabit speedā
No USB cable has āgigabit speedā. It probably has 480 Mbps (USB 2.0 standard).
Maybe he meant a 5 Gbps Gen1 cable. That would be āgigabit speedā but still rather slow by today's standards and won't support DP. They are pretty cheap these days, so wouldn't be suprising to see left over stocks being sold as charging cables.
No USB cable has āgigabit speedā. It probably has 480 Mbps (USB 2.0 standard).
What? I'm either misunderstanding you or this statement isn't correct. Having USB cables that can move data at gigabit rates has been common for quite some years.
What? Iām either misunderstanding you or this statement isnāt correct
I meant that no USB standard actually has exactly 1 Gbit/s. I even mention that next one if 5Gbit/s. Just a misunderstanding I think.
Oh, okay, makes sense, thanks.
Luckily, all new PC seem to choose Thunderbolt over only alt mode, which makes stuff more easy, since they have the flash on the cable (but are also more extensive, I gear
For that portable monitor, you should just need a cable with USB-C plugs on both ends which supports USB 3.0+ (could be branded as SuperSpeed, 5Gbps, etc). Nothing more complicated than that.
The baseline for a cable with USB-C on both ends should be PD up to 60W (3A) and data transfers at USB 2.0 (480Mbps) speeds.
Most cables stick with that baseline because it's enough to charge phones and most people won't use USB-C cables for anything else. Omitting the extra capabilities lets cables be not only cheaper but also longer and thinner.
DisplayPort support uses the same extra data pins that are needed for USB 3.0 data transfers, so in terms of cable support they should be equivalent. There also exist higher-power cables rated for 100W or 240W but there's no way a portable monitor would need that.
Yeah, it's gotten so bad I eventually ordered a USB cable checker to figure out what any given USB cable is capable of (and to see if the cable has gone flaky, which seems to happen a lot). I haven't received it yet so I don't know if I can recommend this item, but ... gosh darn you sure need something like this.
Sometimes people want to charge their phone in an outlet 10 feet from their airport seat.
Sometimes people want to transmit 8k video.
It's not physically possible to do both tasks with the same cable.
But because USB is a flexible standard, we don't have two incompatible specs to do the same thing. So when you get out of the airport and to your meeting, you can actually plug your phone into the meeting room projector for your business presentation. That's a win.
What is the difference between USA and USB?
One connects to all your devices and accesses your data, the other is a hardware standard.
One gives you power, the other does everything it can to make sure you never do.
OIL
exept when manufacturer don't give a fuck and print whatever or nothing next to the port. like always
TL;DR: The USB Implementers Forum is ridiculously bad at naming, symbols and communication in general. (And they don't seriously enforce any of this anyway, so don't even bother learning it.)
This is the correct answer; after the whole USB 3.2 Gen 2 2x2 (hands of blue) bullshit, I wouldnāt trust that team to name a park bench in the middle of the desert. Let alone something important and universally used.
It basically gets longer every few years. At this rate, it'll turn into an Amazon listing.
USB 3.5 Gen 3 2x2 20 Gbit Two-Sided DP PD USB 3 USB 2 USB 1 Compatible
We could have gone for already proven and tested conventions like the resistor color codes and have a unique distinguishable icon for each features to attach when needed (like thunder icon for high power). But nope, we got this USB 3.2 Gen 4 2x2 Hyper Turbocharged World Champions and Knuckles Platinum Edition bs instead.
The bench is called "Bench" (legacy name, it's actually more like a concrete slab, but at the time it was more benchy that the previous bench which was just a pile of sand).
the whole USB 3.2 Gen 2 2x2 (hands of blue) bullshit
If you're not trying to wire your own USB port you can just use the recommended names "USB SuperSpeed 20 Gbps" or "USB 20 Gbps". You don't have to be confused by technical names if you don't want to be.
The real bullshit is between your ears--you and only you can fix it.
"Just plug your device in, you little bitch"
They are not bad at this. You are bad at understanding it.
Don't get mad when you could instead learn something.
Yes it gets complex. It's a 25-year old protocol that does almost everything. Of course it will be.
But the names are not hard if you bother to learn them.
They are not bad at this. You are bad at understanding it.
I work with this stuff, and I do understand it. Some of my colleagues are actively participating in USB-IF workgroups, although not the ones responsible for naming end user facing things. They come to me for advice when those other workgroups changed some names retroactively again and we need to make sure we are still backwards compatible with things that rely on those names and that we are not confusing our customers more than necessary.
That is why I am very confident in claiming those naming schemes are bad.
"donāt even bother learning it" is my advice for normal end users, and I do stand by it.
But the names are not hard if you bother to learn them.
Never said it is hard.
It is more complex than it needs to be.
It is internally inconsistent.
Names get changed retroactively with new spec releases.
None of that is hard to learn, just not worth the effort.
They're bad because manufacturers want to pass their usb 2.0 gear as "usb 3.0 compliant", which it technically is, and their usb 3.0 gear as "usb 3.2" because 3.2 Gen 1x1 is also 5gbps.
Also the whole alternate mode is awesome, but cheap hub chips don't bother trying to support it and the only people who do are the laptop ports so they can save $.40 on a separate hdmi port.
And don't get me started on all the USB-c chargers that only put out 1.5a because it's just a normal 7805 on the back end.
They're bad because manufacturers want to pass their usb 2.0 gear as "usb 3.0 compliant", which it technically is, and their usb 3.0 gear as "usb 3.2" because 3.2 Gen 1x1 is also 5gbps.
The USB X.X is just the version of the standard and doesn't mean anything for the capabilities of a physical device.
When a new standard comes out it superceeds the old one. Devices are always designed and certified according to the current standard.
Soooo...What are you talking about?
I'm talking about using the standard traditionally to denote the performance of the connection.
You don't go around talking about your "Usb 3.0 device" that runs at 480mbps unless you're trying to be a massive dickhole.
That's what I'm talking about.
480mbps
A device or port that does 480mbps transfer speeds is a "Hi-Speed" device/port. That's the real name and always has been.
It doesn't matter what version of the USB spec it was certified under. If it was designed between 2000 and 2008 it was certified under USB 2.0 or 2.1
If that device was certified between 2008 and 2013 then it was certified under USB 3.0. That absolutely doesn't make it a "SuperSpeed" device/port, but that's more than clear when we use the real names.
Nobody uses that, they use the spec number because that's what they've been taught, and they identify with it more than the incredibly stupid 'full/high/super/duper/ultramegahyperspeed' convention which the idiots at the siig decided to break again in 3.2.
Everybody literally on the planet agrees the system is moronic, you're literally the only person who dissents, congratulations on that.
Nobody uses that...Everybody literally on the planet agrees the system is moronic
Then just be as mad as you want--that's the whole point of the news cycle anyways! Why bother learning? Congrats, chaos wins!
I've integrated the IP on silicon (copy pasta with axi mostly), it's not me who has the problem, it's normal people who don't live this shit and just want the plug to work best, which isn't what happens at all.
The naming is a joke to everyone but keep being proud of it.
They come to me for advice when those other workgroups changed some names retroactively again
Can you give a specific example of this?
I'd love to believe all your ethos arguments if you could give me some logos.
There is some stuff to be learned, but especially with USB-C I'd say the vast majority are not labeled. There's even some devices charged with USB C that can't be charged with a PD charger and need an A to C cable. Phones are a great example where you have to look up the specs to know data transfer capabilities. Additionally they renamed the USB 3.0 standard which has been established for over a decade to USB 3.1 Gen 1 which is completely unnecessary and just serves to confuse. The standard was largely understandable with USB 3.0 generally being blue or at least a color other than black and on decently modern devices USB 2.0 would be black. With USB-C indication has just about gone out the window and what used to be a very simple to understand standard has now become nearly impossible to understand without having researched every device and cable you interact with.
There's even some devices charged with USB C that can't be charged with a PD charger and need an A to C cable
Phones with qualcomm chips briefly had their own proprietary fast charging standards that were not a USB standard. You are unlikely to be using those devices in 2024. But is it USB-IF's fault manufacturers tried to create proprietary standards to collect royalties?
Additionally they renamed the USB 3.0 standard which has been established for over a decade to USB 3.1 Gen 1 which is completely unnecessary and just serves to confuse
No they didn't?
The 5Gbps transfer rate introduced in 2008 is called "Superspeed" and it always has been.
USB X.X is not a port or a transfer speed. It's the standard (ie a technical whitepaper). The standard is updated as time marches on and new features are added.
The standard was largely understandable with USB 3.0 generally being blue or at least a color other than black and on decently modern devices USB 2.0 would be black.
This was never a requirement, but it was nice to know which Type-A ports had 8 pins vs 4-pins.
With USB-C indication has just about gone out the window and what used to be a very simple to understand standard has now become nearly impossible to understand without having researched every device and cable you interact with.
For the most part you just plug it in and it works. If you need something specific like an external GPU connection, you can't use your phone charging cable, sure. Is that really that big of a deal?
But is it USB-IFās fault manufacturers tried [...]
Yes, it absolutely is USB-IF's fault that they are not even trying to enforce some semblance of consistency and sanity among adopters. They do have the power to say "no soupcertification for you" to manufacturers not following the rules, but they don't use it anywhere near aggressively enough. And that includes not making rules that are strict enough in the first place.
LOL, yeah, manufacturers don't follow this at all.
Last I looked, these (and the "blue plastic for USB 3" convention) weren't mandated by the spec. So it's not that they're violating the spec, but that they're optional.
And that's the real issue with the USB spec, almost everything is optional. This would be fine if cables were largely interchangeable, but they're not.
What they should have are a handful of very well-defined tiers. Cables should maybe have three (basic, mid-range, high end), and ports can have a couple more.
The problem is that there are too many separate dimensions to define the tiers.
In terms of data signaling speed and latency, you have the basic generations of USB 1.x, 2.0, 3.x, and 4, with Thunderbolt 3 essentially being the same thing as USB4, and Thunderbolt 4 adding on some more minimum requirements.
On top of that, you have USB-PD, which is its own standard for power delivery, including how the devices conduct handshakes over a certified cable.
And then you have the standards for not just raw data speed, but also what other modes are supported, for information to be seamlessly tunneled through the cable and connection in a mode that carries signals other than the data signal spec for USB. Most famously, there's the DisplayPort Alt Mode for driving display data over a USB-C connection with a DP-compatible monitor. But there's also an analog audio mode so that the cable and port passes along analog data to or from microphones or speakers.
Each type of cable, too, carries different physical requirements, which also causes a challenge on how long the cable can be and still work properly. That's why a lot of the cables that support the latest and greatest data and power standards tend to be short. A longer cable might be useful, but could come at the sacrifice of not supporting certain types of functions. I personally have a long cable that supports USB-PD but can't carry thunderbolt data speeds or certain types of signals, but I like it because it's good for plugging in a charger when I'm not that close to an outlet. But I also know it's not a good cable for connecting my external SSD, which would be bottlenecked at USB 2.0 speeds.
So the tiers themselves aren't going to be well defined.
Right, which is why it's so important to define tiers.
For example:
basic support (cheap) - gen 2 speeds, charging at 5v 500ma, etc; for peripherals and whatnot
high speed (fast enough) - 5gbps speeds, charging at 5v 500ma, etc; USB drives, regular laptop/desktop ports, etc
fast charging (general purpose) - 5gbps data transfer, fast charging up to 45W (or maybe a little lower) at various voltages; phones, special laptop/desktop ports
specialized PD - gen 2 speeds (faster is optional), fast charging up to 240W at various voltages
specialized data - 40gbps data transfer, charging at 5v 500ma (faster is optional), display out
You'd use the same cable for 1-3, and specialized cables for 4 and 5, and those cables would have special markings on the connector. Ports for 3-5 would have unique markings as well. Cables and ports can go beyond those specs if they want.
Just because you can break things into separate groups doesn't mean you should. The goal here shouldn't be to make things easier for manufacturers, but to make things easier for users.
And then you have the standards for not just raw data speed, but also what other modes are supported, for information to be seamlessly tunneled through the cable and connection in a mode that carries signals other than the data signal spec for USB.
Not to mention power-only cables to avoid the security issues associated with cables that permit data transfer.
"Power-only" meaning no data BEYOND the PD devices themselves because its actually a data protocol to negotiate the power output to the device.
It has to be optional to remain a "Universal" spec.
If it had more requirements, it would be more cumbersome to implement and device manufacturers would come up with completely different, completely incompatible cables and ports (a la Apple's lightning) that would cause you even more headaches.
"Universal" merely means devices with different capabilities can use the same interface. So you can use mice and keyboards (very low bandwidth needs) on the same port as a data hungry drive. That was the major innovation when USB took over for PS/2, parallel port, etc.
Manufacturers can still use low-end components on the client devices, the requirement would merely be that the ports in host devices and cables would meet some minimum specs to be able to meet USB certification. Instead of having a wide variety of possible configurations, force host devices into smaller niches so the marketing is clearer to customers. Devices would still negotiate voltages, data rates, etc as they do now, the only change would be forcing implementations into buckets.
The USB-C standard and particularly the USB PD (power delivery) is so complex it almost feels comical.
The PD standard document (freely available on usb.org) is over 800 pages long and features a lengthy part about the role of the cable alone which is mostly hidden from the user. Here's a short video about this issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bZ0y9G-4Pc
Do you regularly read highly technical whitepapers? I don't see how an 800 page document is comical for something that works so well.
The USB standards are just... Comically overcomplicated. And almost everything about it is optional. They need a full revamp, making it simpler and mandatory on all future ports, devices and cables.
But they won't do that, will they.
Almost everything about it needs to be optional because sometimes USB is used to charge some cheap battery powered thing and sometimes itās used to make a backup of a harddrive and sometimes itās charging my laptop with enough power for it to be rendering video but still have a net charge increase to the battery while also providing Ethernet, video output, and keyboard/mouse input over the same one port.
EDIT to make it more clear why the variability of USB standards is what it is, compare a modern laptop to one from 10 years ago.
The older laptop has:
for video, an HDMI port (or the less common mini HDMI port), and perhaps a mini DP port
an Ethernet port
a charging plug
possibly some FireWire ports (may or may not be the same as the mini DP port)
USB A ports for keyboard/mouse and other random devices
The newer laptop has:
USBC ports that can do all of the above
The perhiperals, however, donāt support all of the features. They only support the features they actually use. As long as the laptop supports all of the optional features, you donāt need to worry about it.
The is especially helpful for less technical users who may not want to know what the difference between HDMI and DisplayPort is. With a fully USBC based laptop and USBC perhipals you can just plug it in and it will work.
Of course this is all dependent on the laptop implementing all of the extra features, which is still only really true of more expensive laptops.
There should be a way to make it simpler.
Idk, something like "for USB 4 you NEED all of these".
Or maybe USB 4 with levels like bronze, silver, etc.
Or make displaying data rate, display and charging capabilities all mandatory on all ports...
I'm not sure what, but "it's a USB port; look in the manual and if you're lucky you might learn what it does exactly" ain't it.
People do not want to be limited to 1m long cords or only have thick and stiff Thunderbolt3 cords with 20 different conductors for a wired mouse.
Minimum specs like you are proposing just make the standard less useful and would lead to more competing specs that aren't compatible at all (a la lightning cables).
To be a truly "universal" spec, flexibility is king.
Maybe optional opt out? Like to say you are usb-4 you have to have this format and support all of these features. Other you are USB 4 W/O x,y,z,PD,Video,etc. I also think PD levels should be labeled on power sources and sinks.
except its bot competing standards, its just one consortium who has the holy grail universal standard making things needlessly convoluted on purpose.
I miss FireWire, too.
I remember having a FireWire in one of the family desktops when I was a kid. Can't remember what we might have used it for, though.
It resides in the same vague memory hole as the Zip drive that we had.
Firewire was phenomenal for external hard drives. The speed was almost as fast as the drives so you were rarely limited by the port.
Yep, that's because the actual data transfer was handled by the more capable device, instead of only the guest. I think the standard also required a minimum throughput, iirc, whereas USB only had a maximum.
Firewire was good for high bandwidth devices like external hard drives and video cameras because it didn't require the CPU to do any heavy lifting. These days USB is mature enough and CPUs are so fast that we (mostly) don't notice any performance impact but in the Core 2 Duo days you could easily max out one of your two cores with a large file transfer over USB.
Yeah, the ZIP drive was just starting to take off when the Internet killed needing a sneaker net (at least of that size). Add in CD-ROM drives which you needed anyway. And good night.
I had a FireWire hard drive! I remember I bought specifically the enclosure that supported both standards since my motherboard had a FireWire port and on paper it was faster than usb! Too bad the HDD was as slow as molasses
Thank God there's a standard for USB. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one....
My laptop has two USBC ports. No logos of any kind. They are Thunderbolt 4. ĀÆ_(ć)_/ĀÆ
Here, you've lost an arm: \
If you're trying to get Lemmy to print the backslash, you need to make it a double backslash since backslash is an "escape" character that means "ignore any special formatting meaning of the next character" (among other meanings)
Reddit was the same exact way. I don't know how people are messing it up here too.
I have never seen one with SS, but maybe they removed that part in Germany.
I see them on the back of full size computer cases and on docks. They will often be one SS port on the top. I had no idea what it meant before now.
Also don't forget the dubious AliExpress devices that have all these symbols, no data lines, Vcc at 12V and ground attached to a loose M8 nut.
I guess they could have a USB certification body, kinda like UL is for wall power devices, and require that a device have an certification ID number on it that you could look up in their online database to qualify. I mean, you could forge a fake number that doesn't map to anything, but I feel like that's a higher bar than just throwing a USB symbol on there. Like, you gotta know that you're doing something fraudulent in that case.
investigates
Huh.
Apparently UL does certify USB devices. I have no idea how to tell whether a UL-marked device of a given age is certified to do what from the logo alone, though. I guess you could look it up with UL.
I bet that only my high-power USB chargers have it, though. Honestly, I didn't even know that they covered USB, wouldn't have looked for a UL mark on USB devices.
investigates
Well, my Logitech F710 gamepad does have a UL mark. That's some proprietary wireless protocol, uses AA batteries. Not USB and doesn't plug into the wall. Dunno whether they certified it for wireless or power safety or whatever.
looks further
I have a wired USB gamepad with a bunch of Chinese characters, the URL "www.izdtech.com", no USB labels, and no UL mark.
I have a wired/wireless USB 8Bitdo gamepad with a CE mark, USB symbols, and no UL mark (I understand that CE doesn't work like UL. It doesn't indicate that any independent organization has tested the device, just is a concise way to state that the device manufacturer states that the device conforms to some set of standards).
I have a 100W USB PD "Nekteck" charger with a UL mark and some ID number that looks to be associated with that, no CE mark, an FCC mark that I assume is related to RF interference compliance, an enormous USB standard mark with the 100 watt capability listed, and some sort of mark with a box inside another box that I don't recognize.
I have an SIIG USB audio interface that has no USB labels, a CE mark, an FCC mark, and no UL mark.
I have a USB-powered audio mixer that has no USB labels, no FCC mark, no UL mark and a CE mark.
I have a laptop USB charger that has no USB labels, a CE mark, multiple UL marks, one of which appears to be in some sort of teardrop-looking thing, some "UK CA" mark that I assume is some kind of UK regulatory body. It's got that same mysterious "box in a box" mark that I saw before, "VI" in a circle, a picture of a house, some "NYCE" mark, and a "NOM" mark.
I bet that most people have basically no idea what any of this means. I probably know what more of it means than the average person, but definitely not enough to extract a whole lot of information from this. And all of these have a different set of marks; there is no least-common-denominator mark.
Additionally, USB 3.0, 3.1 and 3.2 labels provide no information on the speed. Rather, "Gen 1" means 5Gb/s, Gen 2 means 10 and Gen 2Ć2 means 20Gb/s. These "Gen" labels are seldom found on products however.
So for example USB 3.2 Gen 1 is 5Gb/s while USB 3.1 Gen 2 is 10Gb/s
The dear people at the USB Forum should be rewarded with the Nobel prize in namology for their clear, superior and non-confusing naming scheme and naming process that even the nerdiest of nerds can't follow.
This has already been fixed by the forum FYI, the new spec is to just put clear text labels that denote the capability of the port. I can't find the article I read but this one has an example of the new user-facing branding.
Behind the scenes, hereās what those labels correspond to:
USB 5Gbps: USB 3.0 and 3.1 Gen 1
USB 10Gbps: USB 3.1 Gen 2, 3.2 Gen 2Ć1, and 3.2 Gen 1Ć2
USB 20Gbps: USB 3.2 Gen 2Ć2
USB 40Gbps: USB4ās initial version as currently shipping
That's cool. But even though it finally adds simplicity, it's still yet another renaming of the same things.
Here's a snippet from an article from 2019:
The upcoming 20 Gb/s USB 3.2 connection, which offers twice the speeds of the previous iteration, will be known as 'USB 3.2 Gen 2x2'. Its predecessor, 'USB 3.1' will be rebranded to 'USB 3.2 Gen 2', while 'USB 3.0', which ran at 5 Gb/s speeds, will be termed 'USB 3.2 Gen 1'.
Reading that I want to shoot myself, and even the latest change, which probably is a good one, drives me slightly mad due to the history of renaming everything so many times.
the history of renaming everything so many times.
Every time a new USB spec comes out the version number goes up. A new spec comes out because they add more features. The spec is a whitepaper that explains all the features. It's a "The King is dead, long live the king!" situation.
If you just never used the version numbers to mean something that they never meant (transfer speeds) then literally none of this is confusing.
They've officially renamed the transfer speeds one time after people made a big huff. here's how they changed:
USB SuperSpeed -> USB 5Gbps
USB SuperSpeed 10Gbps -> USB 10Gbps
USB SuperSpeed 20Gpbs -> USB 20Gbps
And If you can't follow along with that, I'm really, really sorry. There's not much I can do from a internet discussion board. XD
Yes, I am the only one confused. It's not like half the tech internet blew a gasket over how confusing and bad the renaming of the generations were. Just me. I guess I should just read the whitepapers of every standard going forward, silly me.
Well if there's anything I expect from the new-cycle masses, it's rationality.
Heaven forbid, we try and do better!
I guess I should just read the whitepapers of every standard going forward, silly me.
You don't have to read whitepapers to know the difference between Ethernet, CAT6 and RJ45 even if your grandpa doesn't know the difference.
It's not too much to expct the "nerds" to know the real names of PAN connections, too.
I aspire to be as cool as you.
clear text labels
The problem with using English anything is that while English is the most-widely-used language in the world, there are still a lot of people out there who don't know it.
The US has a history of just using English text for everything, because most people in the US can do English. Over in Europe, where the language situation is more-fragmented, I think that there's more push for using symbols, which...can have benefits, though it also means that everyone has to learn some symbols.
Maybe "STOP" or "ON" and "OFF" or something aren't that hard to learn. My gut is that maybe we could expect just about everyone in the world to learn a super-minimal subset of English using all-capital Latin letters or something for labeling purposes. "ON", "OFF", "STOP", "YES", "NO", "CANCEL", "POWER", "ERROR", "RESET", "UP", "DOWN", maybe something along those lines. Kinda like a pidgin English designed for devices. But that thing has "CERTIFIED", hardly the first thing someone learns. Also, it appears to have built a US trademark indicator and registered trademark indicator into various official labels, which I think is kind of funny. Like, if the USB guys go out and alter the registration status of their trademarks, are they gonna change the labels, and is everyone gonna go alter their plastic molds and whatever?
Imagine all that text was a bunch of Chinese and imagine how palatable that'd be for the US market. Okay, it's easier to learn the (small) Latin alphabet than Chinese characters, which maybe makes learning basic words easier, but I can't recognize a single Chinese character.
I mean, don't get me wrong. I speak English. I'd rather have descriptive English than a bunch of obscure and sometimes similar-looking symbols, myself. But I don't feel like this is all that ideal, either, not from a global standpoint.
All so sales people can slap on a 3.2 sticker over the 3.1 that was on top of the 3.0 sticker...
Do people care? You just plug in your thing and it works, fast enough in most of the cases.
Why can't I tether my phone to my laptop with two out of three of my cables?
I have an Android phone with a USB-C port and a laptop with (several) USB-C ports.
I have three cables that I carry with me: a USB-C-to-USB-C cable, a second USB-C-to-USB-C cable, and a USB-A-to-USB-C cable. None of these are charging-only power cables, and I've used them for data connections.
One of the USB-C-to-USB-C -- an unmarked cable -- permits for USB tethering to be used.
The other two do not.
The other USB-C-to-USB-C cable even has USB 3.1 symbol.
I don't know why.
Looking more-closely, it looks like the other two don't have a data connection established between the Android phone and the laptop from the laptop's perspective. They've let me do so with other devices.
Checking what data transfer rates a given cable supports electrically
As far as I can tell, there isn't a way to query the "e-marker" on a USB cable from Linux today; I found a comment from someone saying that kernel support is still being worked on. You can use lsusb -t to show the negotiated speed between two devices, so can use them to infer the speed, as long as you have fast-enough devices at both ends of the cable.
What USB PD rates does a USB cable or power consumer or charger support?
I don't know of a good way to determine this from a user standpoint. Note that this is a matrix of voltages and currents, so it isn't just "I support up to rate X". Also, not all devices display the rate of power that they are providing or consuming -- in fact, most don't. My Android phone, a reasonably-sophisticated device and one with a display and capable of both providing or consuming power, doesn't show the rate of power consumption or provision, just "slow" or "fast", without additional software. I understand that that software doesn't work on all Android hardware.
I have -- had -- a laptop that just won't charge if a charger doesn't support a certain USB PD profile, which its provided charger did but not all charging devices did.
When I plug in two devices that both support USB PD, which is the consumer and which the provider?
When I'm in my car, I typically I have three devices that have USB PD ports and can either provide or consume power -- a large powerstation, a laptop, and a phone. I eventually learned a few facts:
First, the direction in which power is being provided via USB PD is independent of which device is operating as a USB host or device using USB OTG ports; it's possible for the direction to be different from the direction of power provision.
Second, apparently the direction of host/device order is random, and devices just remember the host/device direction for a certain amount of time, so that if you plug two USB OTG devices into each other and the direction is not what you want, the idea is that you can figure it out from one or more of the devices indicating this and then unplug them and plug them in again to get transfer in the other direction.
Third, as best I can tell empirically, USB PD does the same random thing.
This creates all kinds of fun if one device powers off and then on again or something; my laptop can start draining its power to my powerstation (generally not what I want), or my phone to my laptop, since all the USB PD ports in question support USB PD in both directions.
Which end is which on an active USB cable?
I have an active optical USB cable, which I obtained so that I could put my computer in a closet, a long way from the rest of my devices; USB on copper has very limited range at present-day speeds without a repeater. It functions in only one direction in terms of data transfer (and obviously can't move power). That particular manufacturer labeled it, though there's no standard for labeling that.
In sum
USB does have reasonably good fallback, so most cables and most devices tend to sort of do something to some degree -- they move some amount of power and some rate of data, though some devices have hard demands on what they need and there isn't a great way to assess what a cable or device supports in most cases from an end user standpoint. But it definitely could be a lot better from my standpoint.
I'd also add that while I have rarely had problems with it -- only came up with one USB-powered analog audio mixer that had less-than-amazing power circuitry and bled noise from dirty power being provided by USB through into the audio signal, and where I put it on a dedicated charger -- USB power can be stupendously dirty. I was watching some guy with an oscilloscope investigate various devices, and all those sensitive devices are accepting all kinds of craziness in terms of power. I'm surprised that USB power sources aren't required to provide some hard guarantees on what they can do in terms of load and response.
Additionally, USB 3.0, 3.1 and 3.2 labels provide no information on the speed
Correct.
USB X.X is the name of the technical whitepaper that describes the standard.
For a long time, USB had three transfer rates. The first legacy speed (slowest) was hardly ever used. The Second was called "Full Speed" and the fastest was called "Hi-speed". Because people could not remember which if these two were faster, they referred to the whitepapers in which they were introduced.
When later versions of USB were introduced people have tried to continue this mental "shortcut" and have caused themselves nothing but confusion.
Every device I have just has a couple of blue ones and a couple of black ones, perhaps some orange ones and some USB-C ports, and good luck figuring out what they all can do. No symbols anywhere.
It's cool, the colors are just for aesthetics. Internally they're all connected to the same USB controller chip anyway.
/s probably
Edit: it was a joke. I know blue means 3.
If they're following the standard, which they often do but sometimes don't, white indicates 2.0 and blue indicates 3.0+. I think there are more but I don't remember the other colours.
the colors are just for aesthetics.
Blue is a convention to indicate USB 3. Of course, not everyone actually implements that, and USB-C ports don't, as far as I know, do that at all, just USB-A.
My current desktop does both -- the case has USB ports on the top that come off a USB header from the motherboard, which have a simple number "3.0" pointing at its USB-A ports in front, but uses black plastic for them. The motherboard's USB connectors in back use the "blue plastic" convention on its USB-A 3 ports, and black plastic on its USB-A 2 ports. The motherboard also labels the USB 3 ports by having a text label reading "USB 3.2", which isn't listed on OP's set of symbols, and puts symbols on them.
Black is USB 2, blue is USB 3, and Orange or Yellow are usually "always on" and/or 2.4 amp or some other kind of thing like that.
Not on all vendors tho - coloring was an optional part of the standard. Dell often uses grey for USB3
and Orange or Yellow are usually āalways onā and/or 2.4 amp or some other kind of thing like that.
It's the variety and surprise here that adds novelty and excitement to life.
The blue USB port is also known as USB 3.0 or SuperSpeed (SS) USB. It was introduced in 2008 and offers a data transfer speed of up to 5 Gbps, which is more than 10 times faster than USB 2.0. In addition, it can transfer data in both directions simultaneously.
I definitely have a number of devices that use newer-than-USB 3.0 and use blue.
The teal USB port is also known as the USB 3.1 Gen 1 or SuperSpeed+ (SS+) USB. Released in 2013, it supports up to 10 Gbps data transfer speed, which is twice as fast as USB 3.0. The color is similar to USB 3.0, but it will appear as slightly more green-toned than the classic blue of 3.0. This is the easiest way to differentiate USB 3.0 vs 3.1 ports.
I don't think any of my devices actually use teal, regardless of what they support. Oh...hmm. Wait, I think my last desktop motherboard did that.
goes to investigate
Yeah, it has teal and blue ports.
My current motherboard uses blue or red for everything USB-A, so clearly isn't using blue to indicate "USB 3.0", and labels every port, blue or red, in English as "USB 3.2". So it clearly isn't using the port color to indicate purely speed.
The red USB port is generally classified as USB 3.2, which was released in 2017. However, it can also be used to indicate a USB 3.1 Gen 2 port.
Another source of novelty and excitement.
Yellow USB Port Meaning
The yellow USB port is another color that can indicate either USB 3.2 or USB 3.1 Gen 2.
So much excitement.
The yellow USB port is more commonly found on laptops while the red USB port is more commonly found on desktop computers. This is because the yellow USB port indicates that it is always on, meaning it will continue to draw power even when the computer is turned off or in sleep mode. As a result, you can generally use it to charge other devices, such as smartphones.
I believe yellow or orange ports always deliver charging power regardless of device's power state.
Most devices don't have theese symbols and basically say fuck you unless you know how to find the specs
Meanwhile my thumb drive:
The best I can do is 20Mbps with the curve xy = 1
Mine is worse, it says it can do way more than 20Mbps, but once the buffer is exhausted, it hangs frequently. And this isn't some random POS from AliExpress, I bought it retail at BestBuy.
Like that guarantees quality.
It certainly doesn't, but it's understandable for users to expect that paying a premium at a place like BestBuy should result in getting a better product that picking up something on Amazon.
I generally do my research, but in this case, I needed it in a pinch to flash a Linux ISO to get my computer up and running because I couldn't find any of my other ones. I expected to get ripped off, so I'm not too mad about it, but I was surprised at how crappy it was since I figured USB drives are largely a solved problem.
And this is why I largely avoid BestBuy and steer others from it, stuff costs more (though they do match if you ask), and they tend to carry crappy accessories and peripherals. It's basically Walmart quality crap priced higher than better products at Microcenter, all because customers either don't know better or don't have any other retail options.
If you're ok with some bulk, go for an nvme enclosure. I have a sabrent one with a 256 GB crucial gen 3 drive in it, it's a slow cheap drive, still substantially better than any usb key and you can put one together for under $100 cad including a longer high speed cable.
I just did a fresh install off of my usb key and wow, super slow compared to any time I've done off my enclosure
Good idea! I don't need it very often (like maybe once/year?), but I'll keep it in mind the next time I start looking for my USB drives again.
I just love that in a world with Power Delivery (PD) they decided that the best way to indicate Display Port (DP) was to have an ambiguous symbol involving a P and a D.
You'll want to run USB PD, not to be confused with the USB "P" and "D" label which refers to DisplayPort, not to be confused with some other ways of transporting DisplayPort over USB. And you'll want charging support, so look for the USB lightning bolt that means "USB charging", not to be confused with the different USB lightning bolt that means "Thunderbolt", which isn't the same thing as the Lightning connector that is about the same size as the USB-C connector and was used in a similar role on various devices.
DisplayPort not to be confused with display port, when someone asks you for a "display port cable" and you start going to pick one of VGA/HDMI/DVI cables instead.
The P and D symbol is the DisplayPort logo. I'm not sure when it was first used, but the DisplayPort standard itself is quite a bit older than USB Power Delivery.
It's still confusing though regardless of which can lay the best claim to the letters P and D. I would have suggested Power Delivery could use some sort of lightning bolt symbol, but then I realised that would probably conflict with Thunderbolt, which also uses USB-C.
It's almost as if having all these different features would be easier to differentiate if they had different physical shapes.
Yeah, Display Port is old, but I've never seen that P and D symbol before, or at least never noticed it. And, even if it existed before Display Port over USB, you'd think that that potential confusion was a good opportunity to come up with a new logo for something that would be put next to a USB port.
Itās almost as if having all these different features would be easier to differentiate if they had different physical shapes.
I think the goal was always that you'd only ever need one type of port and one type of cable and that that port and cable could do anything. Unfortunately, because there are so many revisions and so many features are optional, you've now got a situation where the port is the right shape, the cable fits into the port, but you can't get the thing to work without reading the fine print, or without decoding obscure logos.
How about a monitor/TV for display.
I like that battery for power, though a vertical battery would be clearer.
I like how they (seem to) try to get away from Latin alphabet, just to go with DP for display port.
Also, giving anything the initials "DP" is weird and creepy as fuck, given that "DP" was already a well-established acronym in the porn industry years before DisplayPort was even conceptualized.
If you're going to forbid any 2-letter initialism because it might have naughty connotations, you're not going to be left with many options.
Given that there are engineers involved I wouldn't be at all surprised if that was deliberate. Trying to get potentially offensive or otherwise NSFW acronyms past marketing without them noticing is practically an industry-wide joke at this point, which is why they are so prevalent in the FOSS space. (no marketing staff to complain)
If that's true in this case, though, hats off to whoever managed to get it though to official commercial standards
person with the initials DP has left the chat crying
Dungeon Party
USB keeps changing their own standard every 2 years why bother learning it.
Pshh, speak for yourself. I'm ready for USB 3.2 gen 5 pro ultra max
But will that be better or worse than USB 3.3 gen 2 extra super speed?
Both, of course.
Will USB 3 get an update now USB4 is out?
Eh, USB4 is basically what USB 3.3 would've been, but with fresh branding. I expect it to have the same naming issues after a few updates...
Wasn't USB4 based on Thunderbolt 3?
Sort of? It borrows a lot of the high speed protocol bits from Thunderbolt 3, but I think it does DP a little differently (at least it supports different DP standards than TB3). So it's closely related, but not necessarily the same thing.
Was that the first one that had M Bison as a playable character?
We're not calling it that anymore. It's been rebranded to "SuperDuper Speed USB ]|[" now. Note that this is a different standard than the previous "SuperDuper Speed USB 3," and under no circumstances should you call it "SuperDuper Speed USB 3.0," because there was never any such spec and pedantic nerds will climb up your nose in the comments if you ever utter it.
And Knuckles
I mean, they update the standard to add new things. Is that bad?
They also change existing terms for no good reason.
The don't.
But give me an example of what you're talking about. I'll explain.
USB3.2 gen 2, USB3.2 Gen2x2
The consumer facing names for those transmission specs are and have always been:
SuperSpeed 10 Gbps
SuperSpeed 20 Gbps
Unless you're designing your own circuits you don't need to worry about signaling rates (ie "Gen") or lane configuration (ZĆY).
SuperSpeed is not a "legacy" name.
It's the name of a transfer rate.
I do not trust the maker of this infographic if they cannot understand some basic facts.
Who the hell makes a type-c port that only runs at 2.0 speeds?
iPhone 15, Samsung A series phones and tablets, most Motorola devices, most oppo devices, most realme devices, most nothing devices, most xiaome devices, and many more
I find it hilarious that Apple did that with the iPhone 15. Gave the current technology to only the pro models š
They are such grimy bastards I swear, probably saved $1 just to make you pic the pro
bet they didn't save anything and it's the same chip just artificially limited
Many cheaper smartphones have 2.0 USB C
Many expensive ones too. The iPhone 15 runs at USB 2.0 speeds, despite having USB-C.
And even fucking iPhone 16!
(But doesn't pretty much all non apple flagships support minimum 3.0?
My headphones have a USB c port and connects at USB 2 speeds.
My headphones (Sennheiser Momentum 4) have Bluetooth, USB, and phone jack support. When using Bluetooth mode with the latest firmware update, they sporadically shut down while using in Bluetooth Multipoint mode.
I used headphones for decades very happily with a 1/8th inch jack.
They weren't perfect.
Some devices used a 1/4 inch jack. This at least was electrically-compatible, so one just needed a cheap, appropriately-shaped piece of metal to adapt them.
The 1/8th inch jack connector took up enough space that the smartphone guys eventually mostly banished it from phones, to try to get a bit more space in the device.
There wasn't a standard impedance. While most consumer devices used more-or-less the same impedance (and if you had to, you could just adjust the volume up or down slightly with different headphones) some higher-end headphones required a headphones amplifier that could push more power.
When you plugged a device in, it briefly shorted the connector, and made a lot of noise.
It wasn't wireless (which could be seen as a minus or plus, depending upon whether you wanted ability to walk away from a computer in exchange for a set of other complexities and issues).
It couldn't transmit power (well, not much; there was a convention for doing so that didn't become widespread). That became more significant with the rise of headphones with active noise cancellation, which would need at least some way to get power to the headphones.
But honestly, those were mostly pretty minor problems. Headphones just worked in virtually all cases.
I didn't have to worry about whether-or-not my headphones supported a given sampling rate, the number of devices that could connect to my headphones, wireless interference, or physical plug compatibility aside from the 1/8th inch and 1/4 inch issue (well, and occasionally 2.5mm headset connectors on phones). USB audio didn't resolve the calibrated volume issue, one of the few annoyances I had with the analog connector. I have one set of Bluetooth headphones that start breaking up when I leave the room with the transceiver and another that work flawlessly across the house. I have charging rates to worry about, and whether the device is smart enough to have a battery management system capable of prolonging battery life by shutting off charging at appropriate points. The protocol and physical connector for telephone jacks has changed twice over the past hundred+ years, once to add a ring (for stereo) and once to move from 1/4 inch to 1/8th inch. The Bluetooth and USB standards, while providing for some level of backwards compatibility, have changed like some people change socks. There are different audio protocols (and in some cases competing audio codecs, like LDAC vs aptX). Lossy compression becomes an issue with Bluetooth. Some devices don't support some sampling rates; analog headphones don't care. Having (effectively) zero-latency pass-through mixing is guaranteed doable with any analog headphones with the appropriate mixer, so that one can hear some other audio source live; that's not an option with Bluetooth or USB headphones.
I do like active noise cancellation, and the wireless functionality can occasionally be handy (though in general, it isn't a game-changer for me). But I feel like the user experience has gotten a lot more problematic, in general.
There are at least 4 different incompatible 1/8" TRRS standards.
You couldn't have picked a worse example.
You'd be surprised. My mouse only needs 2.0, but uses a C connector for compatibility. It provides an A to C cable with only 2.0 wiring, which is a decision I assume they made to allow the wire to be more flexible as it can be charged during use or used entirely wired.
Same with my keyboard, and I appreciate the compatibility. If it doesn't need anything faster than 2.0 speeds, there's no reason to include more expensive parts.
It's also important to permit use of adapters for backwards compatibility. Like, if we stop having computers with A ports, there are still gonna be some very expensive devices out there that have A ports. You aren't going to throw out your electron microscope with a USB A port because the USB guys have decided that USB-C being reversible is cool.
Oh totally. I have a pile of RS-232 adapters that you still need to program just about every modern Ethernet switch, and they're all type-A ports.
USB Hi-speed transfer rate are just fine for devices that need to charge regularly but frequently transfer data wirelessly.
USB 2.0 stopped being a relevant whitepaper in late 2001.
A small correction on USB PD...
It's not just USB PD that supports power delivery: Standard USB from way back in 1.0 also supports power delivery to devices as standard, but it's only up to 100mA in USB 1.0, 500mA in USB 2.0 and 900mA in USB 3.0, all at 5V.
USB PD is a dedicated power delivery USB protocol that supports much higher currents (up to 5A) as well as dynamically configured voltages (so, not fixed as 5V anymore) though it's all negotiated so your 5V-only phones isn't going to just get burned with 20V from a USB PD charger.
Since Power = Current * Voltage USB PD can put out quite a lot of power for supporting devices (the maximum depending on what both sides support), which means much faster transmission of power via USB which for example means faster charging of chargeable devices via USB with USB PD.
Anyways, the point being that even really old USB 1.0 can charge your device (just really really slow, though you'll be hard pressed to find anything that doesn't support at least USB 2.0 which can send 5x the current of 1.0 hence charge 5x faster than it), and that standard charging speed goes up with each new Standard USB generation since each has a higher maximum current than the previous one, so for example a standard USB 3.1 charger without USB PD support can still push a nice amount of power down the line to charge devices. It's just that with USB PD things really take off (though only up to a shared maximum that both sides support) and it can push enough power to support larger devices such as full-blown monitors or even charging notebooks.
Also PD extended range or something goes up to 48V 5A
"Universal"
My dick fits into all of them
Seems pretty universal to me š
I legit have never seen the battery used at all. They often use a plug, a lightning bolt confusingly, or don't even label it at all.
USB in 1996: Let's make one connector that handles everything
USB in 2024: Let's make one connector do thirty different incompatible combinations of things
To be fair, the goal is the same.
Not everyone needs the sheer CPU, power, and costs of a 40 GB/s connection.
Higher wattage chargers cost more
Not everyone needs a USB port that does video out (even if it should be standard now that virtually every new GPU should be compatible)
Even if the CPU and GPU support a feature, the OEM can use a cheaper controller
The controller firmware can lack support for a feature or be buggy
The USB forum can only solve points 4 and 5 without raising costs on the cheapest hardware.
While USB is now needlessly complicated and poorly labeled for consumer understanding, at least it succeeds in being backwards compatible so long as the physical connectors match (and all you need is a dumb adapter to convert any connector). If you have a 3.0 port on one device, a 2.0 port on the other device, and a 3.1 cable, you get 2.0 transfer speeds.
HDMI has the same kind of "issue". Whatever the specs on each component, throughput and features drop to the lowest common denominator when in use.
If you have a 3.0 port on one device, a 2.0 port on the other device, and a 3.1 cable, you get 2.0 transfer speeds.
USB ports are not labeled with numbers. You just made up numbers to name several different things.
This is why you think things are "poorly labled". Your headcannon is broken, not the labeling.
USB in 1996: lets let you plug any device into the back of your computer.
USB in 2024: phones, tablets laptops are going to charge at crazy voltages and we're going to show you 8k video all over the same port and you can insert it in both directions and we're still going to connect any device to any device.
That meme sucked
All they had to do was require stamped icons on the ends of the plugs in the spec, and instead we have the current cable mystery clusterfuck š¤¦
I think that maybe having two similar lightning bolt symbols that mean different things wasn't the best design decision that the USB guys could have made.
best design decision that the USB guys could have made
lol the whole history of usb is full of design fuckyous
USB-A: the 4 dimensional port.
I mean, they fixed that with USB-C (after introducing one small USB port, mini-USB, that wasn't reversible, with the tensioners that wear out on the expensive (device) side and and then introducing micro-USB which fixed the tensioners but still wasn't reversible).
I'd personally kind of like to have magnetic breakaway connectors or similar so that I can't damage devices if they fall, especially given that micro-USB and USB-C aren't the most-physically-robust of connectors. Adapters with proprietary ways to do this exist:
But they aren't part of the USB spec. If they ever switch to something like that, we're gonna have another phase of incompatibility.
as easy as it is to shit on usb, kids these days will never know the misery of having a different, un-hub-able, proprietary port for every device: ps/2 for mouse and keyboard, 1/8th inch audio or SPDIF for anything audio, SCSI, parallel/serial ports, etc etc
The 'Thunderbolt' symbol is Intel's proprietary technology. Apple and Intel made it. First apple registered Thunderbolt as a trademark but later they transferred it to Intel. The lightning bolt icon which supports fast charging phones or other devices when connected to the laptop is different and developed by the USB guys.
Things are muddied a bit though because USB 4 has built in support for thunderbolt
Everything defined in the Thunderbolt 3 spec was incorporated into the USB 4 spec, so Thunderbolt 3 and USB 4 should be basically identical. In reality the two standards are enforced by different certification bodies, so some hardware manufacturers can't really market their compliance with one or the other standard until they get that certification. Framework's laptops dealt with that for a while, where they represented that their ports supported certain specs that were basically identical to the USB 4 spec or even the Thunderbolt 4 spec, but couldn't say so until after units had already been shipping.
One should note that though Thunderbolt over USB-C offers the same speed and connectivity as a native thunderbolt cable, the native cable can be 40m long whereas the USB-C implementation is max 2m
Handy guide, but this whole USB situation is a cock-up, since it needs the freakin guide in the first place.
Meh, while there really could be less. At least they are all physically compatible. And backwards protocol compatible to the lowest common denominator. Which is a huge step forward.
Seriously, as an IT person, I still never know what most of my USB ports are capable of, but I'm glad they are backwards compatible. If something is slow, then I try a different cable and port.
At least they are all physically compatible.
They mostly support an electrical least-common-denominator (like, I have USB devices that won't accept USB PD for charging below a given level), but they definitely aren't all physically-compatible. There are a lot of physical USB connectors.
Thank you, I had almost forgotten that you can't make a comment on the Internet without someone misunderstanding even basic assumptions. Like in this case, a picture exclusively showing usb-c, could be assumed that a comment about it, would also be referring to usb-c.
P.S. (I'm fully aware the last one is usb-a, the writer even makes note of it and why they included it).
There nothing in the comment that you are responding to or OP's original post that is specific to USB-C. OP references USB-A and USB-C both, and the comment you responded to doesn't specify USB-C.
What about red USB-A ports, and USB-C ports with no symbol by them at all (like on phones and desktop PCs)?
On desktop PCs, Depending upon the Motherboard manufacturer and model series, it could either mean nothing other than some gaming marketing jargon or...
When a motherboard has both red and blue ports, the Red ones could be those connected directly to the CPU lanes for USB, with the blue ones being routed through the PCH.
If there is just one red coloured USB A port, it might be designated for BIOS updates (unless they have another colour for that).
On gigabyte boards, red ports were/are signifying their "ON/OFF charge" and "3x power" gimmicks. Basically means that it's a usb 2.0, with 1.5A limit over normal 500mA, and remains powered when the PC is turned off.
I've literally never seen any of these except the top symbol.
I've never seen any of the SS 10gig or USB PD icons, but I've seen the rest. I've got Thunderbolt icons on at least 2 icons and SS USB 3.1 icons on many normal USB A ports.
Well, except all the legacy symbols on devices older than current gen.
Came here disappointed to see no one said anything about Black D inside white P
Edit: yes, I have the humour of a 16 yo
It's the other way around š
I know, but it doesn't really work that way š
The standard might be complicated if you want the specifics, but for everyday use it's incredibly simple, and I love it. The number of times I needed this information is 1, even though most of my devices, including an external monitor, are USB-C.
Yeah. I grew up in the days of serial ports and parallel ports, and USB in general is so much better for most purposes. (I recall plugging my first mouse into the serial port...but wait! Where will my Hayes Smartmodem modem plug into then? Also, don't plug and unplug things from the serial port while the computer is running.)
And USB-C is even better. My tablet needs a charge? Well my laptop charger is right here... My phone is low and needs a quick charge? Well my USB-C tablet charger will give it a decent boost very quickly. No worries about getting it plugged in the wrong way, either.
I have a docking station for my work laptop, so when I had to replace my personal laptop, a laptop that supported USB-C power delivery was mandatory. I don't use it with the docking station very often, but knowing I can without an issue is great. My wife also has a Macbook that works on the docking station, too, in case she ever wants to use my dual monitor setup. All three laptops, from three different brands, are just plug in and go.
I can't imagine how you think it's incredibly simple. These things are hell to explain to pretty much any normal person who needs to know why there's no picture on the monitor or why their laptop/phone is not charging, or why the keyboard isn't working in BIOS (no USB 3 support so you gotta switch to a USB 2 port). Add to that the combinatorial complexity of different cables and hubs supporting different things, and no tools for troubleshooting what feature is missing (and where in the chain) or what is suboptimal.
Worse, sometimes it's my boss who thinks they can cheap out and get a USBC dock instead of a proper dock, forcing me to run at non-native lower resolutions or unable to use a second screen.
It's future proof and doesn't need a decoder manual other than basic literacy. It can be in whatever language the fucking keyboard is. If you want to be redundant but even more clear:
Universal Serial Bus -> (this hole right here)
Speed: 40Gb/s
Power: 2.4Amps
Audio/Video: 4K at 120Hz or 8K at 30Hz
Amps are not power
So do like they did for video and put 2A @ 5V on the label. Now you have power.
Edit: clarity
But if its USB PD it can be more than 5V though.
That's why you specify it there:
2A@5-15V or something.
Sorry. I must have missed that. I am working on 3 hours of sleep rn due to a flight I need to catch.
Ah. GL with your flight.
Why use more words when less is easier.
Fewer. Sorry, pet peeve of mine. If you can count the thing, it's fewer, not less.
I was trying for this. Probably should have have just pasted it.
The superiority of german aryan ports proven once again.
(this is a joke, nazism is evil and I hate it)
yet all I needed is a "this side up" symbol ...
Honestly, I didn't really have an issue with USB type A ports. They worked fine, and it was only a minor inconvenience to orient them the right way. I cared far more about capabilities of the port (speed, power delivery, etc) than I did about the actual port.
That said, micro-USB sucks in every way. The awkward "is this the right way?" thing is way worse than with USB-A, it's not meaningfully smaller than mini-USB, the port is incredibly hard to clean (and it always gets dirty), and the connector seems to break all the time. I would've been totally fine with moving everything to mini-USB instead. The connector was less flimsy without being that much bigger, and it had room for more wires.
I do like USB-C though, I'm just not sure the added complexity is worth it.
Honestly, I didnāt really have an issue with USB type A ports. They worked fine, and it was only a minor inconvenience to orient them the right way. I cared far more about capabilities of the port (speed, power delivery, etc) than I did about the actual port.
I believe that the reason that the smaller USB variants showed up was because some devices were just too small to physically accommodate a USB-A plug. Think MP3 players and later -- very importantly -- smartphones.
For the vast majority of consumer electronics, USB-A is fine. But for things that are as thin as possible, usually to fit into a pocket, it starts to bump up against limits.
That said, micro-USB sucks in every way. The awkward āis this the right way?ā thing is way worse than with USB-A, itās not meaningfully smaller than mini-USB, the port is incredibly hard to clean (and it always gets dirty), and the connector seems to break all the time. I wouldāve been totally fine with moving everything to mini-USB instead.
Mini-USB put the tensioners -- the bit that wears out over time, is the bottleneck on the lifetime of the thing -- on the (expensive) device rather than the (cheap) cable. Micro-USB and USB-C didn't make that mistake.
Like, I think that there was a legitimate reason to fix that one way or another.
MP3 players and later
Sure, and I had a handful that used mini-USB instead of micro-USB, and they were completely fine. It's easy to quickly look at the plug and orient it the right way, whereas with micro-USB, it's a fair bit harder.
I don't think I ever had a mini-USB device wear out the port. Then again, I didn't have a ton of them, so maybe it's more common.
Regardless, USB-C feels like an over-engineered solution to a few small problems. The ability to use it in any orientation is nice I guess, but I still have similar problems that I had w/ micro-USB, with cables wearing out over time. I'd rather we optimize for easier to swap ports (i.e. something like the Framework laptop's changeable ports).
Word
Typically, the side of the plug with the USB logo is "up". There are exceptions.
Also typically, if a USB port is vertical, up is to the left. Again, there are exceptions.
I've never seen the one enclosed in a battery, but I've seen the rest.
"Basic"
Itās useful but it got me even more lost š
So many different standards my god.
Thanks for succinctly explaining what thunderbolt is
That is not what I'm suggesting. I'm not saying charging only cables shouldn't exist. I'm saying what everything does should be clearer.
Those will legally do pretty much anything depending on what cable you use anyway. (and what cable you end up using is pretty much a surprise until you've tested it.)
All thanks to USB making our lives more simple. (yay)
Ok, I suppose it is more simple in quite a few ways.
Every computer store should have a poster about this.
I can't even find a decent PCIE USB/Thunderbolt card (one that support VFIO would be nice and actually has a Linux kernel driver, so ASM and Renesas are both out..)
some additional info about USB. If your cable/connector is old, idk how old is requred, the names and standards are actually completely different now than they used to be, but they're adopted into the new standards, so you have to keep this in mind when trying to recognize this stuff.
thanks USB forum, you guys are the best :)
Now do the cables š
holy shit. thanks, usb.
white P inside a black D
Oh... Oh!
No symbol for power-only ports?
These are found almost exclusively on PC/laptops/tablets. Which I've never seen a power port only on.
Would be nice to have a standard indicator on the cable side of things.
Insert thank you gif
What are you going to do with this, hang it on your wall like a chord chart?
ai generated lol
What's AI generated?
Me. Sigh.
The text. And probably images too (but the only mistake being the wrong port depiction (all c) says more human).
You won't find these symbols on most devices though (certainly not on any macbook as the picture suggests).
By removing the symbols they were able to shave the case down 0.0003nm, making it the thinnest and lightest laptop ever.
Courage!
Stunning and brave!
How brave!
If they etched the symbol they could have reduced the weight of the laptop by 0.003g making it even better
But if they omit the symbol entirely, they save 0.003 cents per unit, but they will continue to charge the same inflated retail price for it and all their cult members will cover for them by gushing about how sleek the "minimalist" design is.
You know itās a thunderbolt connection on a MacBook. They stopped using the USB symbol when they used the usb for thunderbolt and stopped using the mini display port.
I didn't take the image to be showing a macbook, it could just as easily be my computer or probably many others.
It could be, but combine the color looking very much like Apple's space grey, the slimness of it, particularly how slim the lid is versus the body, and what looks like the MacBook's classic black, rounded rubber stoppers on the bottom, I think it's safe to say that's meant to be an MacBook.
Also certain MacBook models tried to go to a single USB C port about a decade ago, and it was on the corner like that.
True, my latest Dell laptop has 3 "usb-c shaped ports", there is 0 symbol anywhere close to them or the underside cover, you're on your own as to what it supports, you have to find the doc online somewhere I guess.
I discovered that my Thinkpad apparently supports charging from all of the (unlabeled) USB-C ports after I inadvertently started it charging from my cell phone's (unlabeled) USB-C port.
I can do you one better: My GPD laptop has a charging indicator on the center type-C port indicating that this is where the power supply goes, but it can actually be charged from either port regardless of the icon. Both ports are USB 3.0 or 3.2 or whatever the current fast standard is this week, but only the center one supports video out via an external GPU enclosure. So if you want to use it docked with an eGPU, it's actually required to not plug the power supply into the port that says you should plug the power supply into it.
So not only is the marking meaningless, it's arguably worse than meaningless because in one of the headline hardware setups for the machine it is actually 100% incorrect to do what the marking is telling you to do. Wrap your head around that one...
Tbf my work Dell Latitude 5440 has a USB A with a SS5, an A with a SS5 and charging indicator, a C with a thunderbolt indicator, and a C with a battery and a thunderbolt indicator.
So at least some of their laptops do in fact have the indicators similar-ish enough to what the infographic shows.
my 5680 has absolutely nothing. Checking online I found that the right one is a usb-c 3.2 and the 2 left ones are TB4. IIRC they all support DisplayPort and all support being used as the power input (165W charger), not sure for PD and fast charging a cell/tablet...
With some devices, I assume that they're trying to save a bit of money.
With the MBP, I'm pretty sure that they just don't want to disrupt the designer's vision of the aesthetic.
Have the thunderbolt symbol on my HP Laptop.
Why would you need them on a MacBook? They're always* Thunderbolt.
Edit: Better explained by GamingChairModel below. I entirely forgot one series of MacBook, and also forgot when the older ones did have the Thunderbolt symbol on them.
No they aren't. Only some are.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/109523
The only devices that don't have at least Thunderbolt 3 on all ports do use the Thunderbolt logo on the ones that support it, except the short-lived 12-inch MacBook (non-Pro, non-Air). Basically, for data transfer:
For power delivery, every USB-C port in every Apple laptop supports at least first generation USB-PD.
For display, every USB-C port in every Apple laptop (and maybe even the desktops) supports DisplayPort alt mode.
It's annoying but not actually that hard to remember in the wild.
I completely forgot the 12-inch one existed.
Okay, the old ones that apparently have both do have the Thunderbolt symbol on the ones that are, though, so what's the problem?
It gets even better, each function of the port also needs proper support from the cable. Often cables do not support the full spec of usb to cut costs.
While the symbols in the post are often put on computers, for usb cables this is seldom done (only a few brands do).
Source: had to find a cable that supports both DP and PD to connect a portable external monitor after I lost the original cable. (1/9 cables worked)
Yes, this is incredibly annoying and it's also the reason why some USB cables cost more than others, even they may look the same superficially.
One of those cables that don't work is rated for like 120W, with gigabit transfer speed... But it refuses to transmit display.... Like bruh
1080p at 60 Hz is 4.4 gigabit
Didn't really think about that one but you're right damn... (Looked it up, and it depends on the bit depth etc, but it's around 3.2Gbps for the display settings if I'm correct)... So that explains a lot
Gigabit is capable of like 720p@30Hz which it probably should be able to fall back on, but I understand why they wouldn't do that haha. 1080p@15Hz is also possible :)
USB-C video is usually DisplayPort Alt Mode, which uses a completely different data rate and protocol from USB.
Even using old 2016 hardware, a computer and USB-C cable that both only support 5 Gbps USB (such as USB 3.1 Gen 1) can often easily transmit an uncompressed 4K 60Hz video stream over that cable, using about 15.7Gbps of DisplayPort 1.2 bandwidth. Could go far higher than that with DP 2.0.
Some less common video-over-USB devices/docks use DisplayLink instead, which is indeed contained within USB packets and bound by the USB data rate, but it uses lossy compression so those uncompressed numbers aren't directly comparable.
That sounds like a dedicated charging cable. So yeah, they will (if at all) only transfer data slowly and not support any extras features like displayport.
A dedicated charging cable wouldnāt have āgigabit speedā
No USB cable has āgigabit speedā. It probably has 480 Mbps (USB 2.0 standard).
Maybe he meant a 5 Gbps Gen1 cable. That would be āgigabit speedā but still rather slow by today's standards and won't support DP. They are pretty cheap these days, so wouldn't be suprising to see left over stocks being sold as charging cables.
What? I'm either misunderstanding you or this statement isn't correct. Having USB cables that can move data at gigabit rates has been common for quite some years.
Here's the latest stuff:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB4
I meant that no USB standard actually has exactly 1 Gbit/s. I even mention that next one if 5Gbit/s. Just a misunderstanding I think.
Oh, okay, makes sense, thanks.
Luckily, all new PC seem to choose Thunderbolt over only alt mode, which makes stuff more easy, since they have the flash on the cable (but are also more extensive, I gear
For that portable monitor, you should just need a cable with USB-C plugs on both ends which supports USB 3.0+ (could be branded as SuperSpeed, 5Gbps, etc). Nothing more complicated than that.
The baseline for a cable with USB-C on both ends should be PD up to 60W (3A) and data transfers at USB 2.0 (480Mbps) speeds.
Most cables stick with that baseline because it's enough to charge phones and most people won't use USB-C cables for anything else. Omitting the extra capabilities lets cables be not only cheaper but also longer and thinner.
DisplayPort support uses the same extra data pins that are needed for USB 3.0 data transfers, so in terms of cable support they should be equivalent. There also exist higher-power cables rated for 100W or 240W but there's no way a portable monitor would need that.
Yeah, it's gotten so bad I eventually ordered a USB cable checker to figure out what any given USB cable is capable of (and to see if the cable has gone flaky, which seems to happen a lot). I haven't received it yet so I don't know if I can recommend this item, but ... gosh darn you sure need something like this.
Sometimes people want to charge their phone in an outlet 10 feet from their airport seat.
Sometimes people want to transmit 8k video.
It's not physically possible to do both tasks with the same cable.
But because USB is a flexible standard, we don't have two incompatible specs to do the same thing. So when you get out of the airport and to your meeting, you can actually plug your phone into the meeting room projector for your business presentation. That's a win.
What is the difference between USA and USB?
One connects to all your devices and accesses your data, the other is a hardware standard.
One gives you power, the other does everything it can to make sure you never do.
OIL
exept when manufacturer don't give a fuck and print whatever or nothing next to the port. like always
TL;DR: The USB Implementers Forum is ridiculously bad at naming, symbols and communication in general. (And they don't seriously enforce any of this anyway, so don't even bother learning it.)
This is the correct answer; after the whole USB 3.2 Gen 2 2x2 (hands of blue) bullshit, I wouldnāt trust that team to name a park bench in the middle of the desert. Let alone something important and universally used.
It basically gets longer every few years. At this rate, it'll turn into an Amazon listing.
USB 3.5 Gen 3 2x2 20 Gbit Two-Sided DP PD USB 3 USB 2 USB 1 Compatible
We could have gone for already proven and tested conventions like the resistor color codes and have a unique distinguishable icon for each features to attach when needed (like thunder icon for high power). But nope, we got this
USB 3.2 Gen 4 2x2 Hyper Turbocharged World Champions and Knuckles Platinum Editionbs instead.The bench is called "Bench" (legacy name, it's actually more like a concrete slab, but at the time it was more benchy that the previous bench which was just a pile of sand).
If you're not trying to wire your own USB port you can just use the recommended names "USB SuperSpeed 20 Gbps" or "USB 20 Gbps". You don't have to be confused by technical names if you don't want to be.
The real bullshit is between your ears--you and only you can fix it.
"Just plug your device in, you little bitch"
They are not bad at this. You are bad at understanding it.
Don't get mad when you could instead learn something.
Yes it gets complex. It's a 25-year old protocol that does almost everything. Of course it will be.
But the names are not hard if you bother to learn them.
I work with this stuff, and I do understand it. Some of my colleagues are actively participating in USB-IF workgroups, although not the ones responsible for naming end user facing things. They come to me for advice when those other workgroups changed some names retroactively again and we need to make sure we are still backwards compatible with things that rely on those names and that we are not confusing our customers more than necessary.
That is why I am very confident in claiming those naming schemes are bad.
"donāt even bother learning it" is my advice for normal end users, and I do stand by it.
Never said it is hard.
It is more complex than it needs to be.
It is internally inconsistent.
Names get changed retroactively with new spec releases.
None of that is hard to learn, just not worth the effort.
They're bad because manufacturers want to pass their usb 2.0 gear as "usb 3.0 compliant", which it technically is, and their usb 3.0 gear as "usb 3.2" because 3.2 Gen 1x1 is also 5gbps.
Also the whole alternate mode is awesome, but cheap hub chips don't bother trying to support it and the only people who do are the laptop ports so they can save $.40 on a separate hdmi port.
And don't get me started on all the USB-c chargers that only put out 1.5a because it's just a normal 7805 on the back end.
The USB X.X is just the version of the standard and doesn't mean anything for the capabilities of a physical device.
When a new standard comes out it superceeds the old one. Devices are always designed and certified according to the current standard.
Soooo...What are you talking about?
I'm talking about using the standard traditionally to denote the performance of the connection.
You don't go around talking about your "Usb 3.0 device" that runs at 480mbps unless you're trying to be a massive dickhole.
That's what I'm talking about.
A device or port that does 480mbps transfer speeds is a "Hi-Speed" device/port. That's the real name and always has been.
It doesn't matter what version of the USB spec it was certified under. If it was designed between 2000 and 2008 it was certified under USB 2.0 or 2.1
If that device was certified between 2008 and 2013 then it was certified under USB 3.0. That absolutely doesn't make it a "SuperSpeed" device/port, but that's more than clear when we use the real names.
Nobody uses that, they use the spec number because that's what they've been taught, and they identify with it more than the incredibly stupid 'full/high/super/duper/ultramegahyperspeed' convention which the idiots at the siig decided to break again in 3.2.
Everybody literally on the planet agrees the system is moronic, you're literally the only person who dissents, congratulations on that.
Then just be as mad as you want--that's the whole point of the news cycle anyways! Why bother learning? Congrats, chaos wins!
I've integrated the IP on silicon (copy pasta with axi mostly), it's not me who has the problem, it's normal people who don't live this shit and just want the plug to work best, which isn't what happens at all.
The naming is a joke to everyone but keep being proud of it.
Can you give a specific example of this?
I'd love to believe all your ethos arguments if you could give me some logos.
There is some stuff to be learned, but especially with USB-C I'd say the vast majority are not labeled. There's even some devices charged with USB C that can't be charged with a PD charger and need an A to C cable. Phones are a great example where you have to look up the specs to know data transfer capabilities. Additionally they renamed the USB 3.0 standard which has been established for over a decade to USB 3.1 Gen 1 which is completely unnecessary and just serves to confuse. The standard was largely understandable with USB 3.0 generally being blue or at least a color other than black and on decently modern devices USB 2.0 would be black. With USB-C indication has just about gone out the window and what used to be a very simple to understand standard has now become nearly impossible to understand without having researched every device and cable you interact with.
Phones with qualcomm chips briefly had their own proprietary fast charging standards that were not a USB standard. You are unlikely to be using those devices in 2024. But is it USB-IF's fault manufacturers tried to create proprietary standards to collect royalties?
No they didn't?
The 5Gbps transfer rate introduced in 2008 is called "Superspeed" and it always has been.
USB X.X is not a port or a transfer speed. It's the standard (ie a technical whitepaper). The standard is updated as time marches on and new features are added.
This was never a requirement, but it was nice to know which Type-A ports had 8 pins vs 4-pins.
For the most part you just plug it in and it works. If you need something specific like an external GPU connection, you can't use your phone charging cable, sure. Is that really that big of a deal?
Yes, it absolutely is USB-IF's fault that they are not even trying to enforce some semblance of consistency and sanity among adopters. They do have the power to say "no
soupcertification for you" to manufacturers not following the rules, but they don't use it anywhere near aggressively enough. And that includes not making rules that are strict enough in the first place.LOL, yeah, manufacturers don't follow this at all.
Last I looked, these (and the "blue plastic for USB 3" convention) weren't mandated by the spec. So it's not that they're violating the spec, but that they're optional.
And that's the real issue with the USB spec, almost everything is optional. This would be fine if cables were largely interchangeable, but they're not.
What they should have are a handful of very well-defined tiers. Cables should maybe have three (basic, mid-range, high end), and ports can have a couple more.
The problem is that there are too many separate dimensions to define the tiers.
In terms of data signaling speed and latency, you have the basic generations of USB 1.x, 2.0, 3.x, and 4, with Thunderbolt 3 essentially being the same thing as USB4, and Thunderbolt 4 adding on some more minimum requirements.
On top of that, you have USB-PD, which is its own standard for power delivery, including how the devices conduct handshakes over a certified cable.
And then you have the standards for not just raw data speed, but also what other modes are supported, for information to be seamlessly tunneled through the cable and connection in a mode that carries signals other than the data signal spec for USB. Most famously, there's the DisplayPort Alt Mode for driving display data over a USB-C connection with a DP-compatible monitor. But there's also an analog audio mode so that the cable and port passes along analog data to or from microphones or speakers.
Each type of cable, too, carries different physical requirements, which also causes a challenge on how long the cable can be and still work properly. That's why a lot of the cables that support the latest and greatest data and power standards tend to be short. A longer cable might be useful, but could come at the sacrifice of not supporting certain types of functions. I personally have a long cable that supports USB-PD but can't carry thunderbolt data speeds or certain types of signals, but I like it because it's good for plugging in a charger when I'm not that close to an outlet. But I also know it's not a good cable for connecting my external SSD, which would be bottlenecked at USB 2.0 speeds.
So the tiers themselves aren't going to be well defined.
Right, which is why it's so important to define tiers.
For example:
You'd use the same cable for 1-3, and specialized cables for 4 and 5, and those cables would have special markings on the connector. Ports for 3-5 would have unique markings as well. Cables and ports can go beyond those specs if they want.
Just because you can break things into separate groups doesn't mean you should. The goal here shouldn't be to make things easier for manufacturers, but to make things easier for users.
Not to mention power-only cables to avoid the security issues associated with cables that permit data transfer.
"Power-only" meaning no data BEYOND the PD devices themselves because its actually a data protocol to negotiate the power output to the device.
It has to be optional to remain a "Universal" spec.
If it had more requirements, it would be more cumbersome to implement and device manufacturers would come up with completely different, completely incompatible cables and ports (a la Apple's lightning) that would cause you even more headaches.
"Universal" merely means devices with different capabilities can use the same interface. So you can use mice and keyboards (very low bandwidth needs) on the same port as a data hungry drive. That was the major innovation when USB took over for PS/2, parallel port, etc.
Manufacturers can still use low-end components on the client devices, the requirement would merely be that the ports in host devices and cables would meet some minimum specs to be able to meet USB certification. Instead of having a wide variety of possible configurations, force host devices into smaller niches so the marketing is clearer to customers. Devices would still negotiate voltages, data rates, etc as they do now, the only change would be forcing implementations into buckets.
The USB-C standard and particularly the USB PD (power delivery) is so complex it almost feels comical.
The PD standard document (freely available on usb.org) is over 800 pages long and features a lengthy part about the role of the cable alone which is mostly hidden from the user. Here's a short video about this issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bZ0y9G-4Pc
Do you regularly read highly technical whitepapers? I don't see how an 800 page document is comical for something that works so well.
The USB standards are just... Comically overcomplicated. And almost everything about it is optional. They need a full revamp, making it simpler and mandatory on all future ports, devices and cables.
But they won't do that, will they.
Almost everything about it needs to be optional because sometimes USB is used to charge some cheap battery powered thing and sometimes itās used to make a backup of a harddrive and sometimes itās charging my laptop with enough power for it to be rendering video but still have a net charge increase to the battery while also providing Ethernet, video output, and keyboard/mouse input over the same one port.
EDIT to make it more clear why the variability of USB standards is what it is, compare a modern laptop to one from 10 years ago.
The older laptop has:
for video, an HDMI port (or the less common mini HDMI port), and perhaps a mini DP port
an Ethernet port
a charging plug
possibly some FireWire ports (may or may not be the same as the mini DP port)
USB A ports for keyboard/mouse and other random devices
The newer laptop has:
The perhiperals, however, donāt support all of the features. They only support the features they actually use. As long as the laptop supports all of the optional features, you donāt need to worry about it.
The is especially helpful for less technical users who may not want to know what the difference between HDMI and DisplayPort is. With a fully USBC based laptop and USBC perhipals you can just plug it in and it will work.
Of course this is all dependent on the laptop implementing all of the extra features, which is still only really true of more expensive laptops.
There should be a way to make it simpler.
Idk, something like "for USB 4 you NEED all of these".
Or maybe USB 4 with levels like bronze, silver, etc.
Or make displaying data rate, display and charging capabilities all mandatory on all ports...
I'm not sure what, but "it's a USB port; look in the manual and if you're lucky you might learn what it does exactly" ain't it.
People do not want to be limited to 1m long cords or only have thick and stiff Thunderbolt3 cords with 20 different conductors for a wired mouse.
Minimum specs like you are proposing just make the standard less useful and would lead to more competing specs that aren't compatible at all (a la lightning cables).
To be a truly "universal" spec, flexibility is king.
Maybe optional opt out? Like to say you are usb-4 you have to have this format and support all of these features. Other you are USB 4 W/O x,y,z,PD,Video,etc. I also think PD levels should be labeled on power sources and sinks.
Relevant XKCD.
except its bot competing standards, its just one consortium who has the holy grail universal standard making things needlessly convoluted on purpose.
I miss FireWire, too.
I remember having a FireWire in one of the family desktops when I was a kid. Can't remember what we might have used it for, though.
It resides in the same vague memory hole as the Zip drive that we had.
Firewire was phenomenal for external hard drives. The speed was almost as fast as the drives so you were rarely limited by the port.
Yep, that's because the actual data transfer was handled by the more capable device, instead of only the guest. I think the standard also required a minimum throughput, iirc, whereas USB only had a maximum.
Firewire was good for high bandwidth devices like external hard drives and video cameras because it didn't require the CPU to do any heavy lifting. These days USB is mature enough and CPUs are so fast that we (mostly) don't notice any performance impact but in the Core 2 Duo days you could easily max out one of your two cores with a large file transfer over USB.
Yeah, the ZIP drive was just starting to take off when the Internet killed needing a sneaker net (at least of that size). Add in CD-ROM drives which you needed anyway. And good night.
I had a FireWire hard drive! I remember I bought specifically the enclosure that supported both standards since my motherboard had a FireWire port and on paper it was faster than usb! Too bad the HDD was as slow as molasses
Now that was a peripheral protocol standard.
sigh
https://xkcd.com/927/
Thank God there's a standard for USB. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one....
Standards
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIeA2N2Onb8
USB = Unintelligible Symbols of Bewilderment
My laptop has two USBC ports. No logos of any kind. They are Thunderbolt 4. ĀÆ_(ć)_/ĀÆ
Here, you've lost an arm: \
If you're trying to get Lemmy to print the backslash, you need to make it a double backslash since backslash is an "escape" character that means "ignore any special formatting meaning of the next character" (among other meanings)
Reddit was the same exact way. I don't know how people are messing it up here too.
I have never seen one with SS, but maybe they removed that part in Germany.
::: spoiler For those that donāt know https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schutzstaffel?wprov=sfti1 :::
Thank god that no one made a transfer speed standard of 88 Gb/s
For the people don't know.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/88_(number)#In_neo-Nazism
That's for USB 14.
stop
hammer time!
Duplicated message
stop
I looked at two Dell laptops and a Geekom mini PC, all bought in Germany, and they all have the SS symbol.
So the SS Anne from PokƩmon was a Nazi cruise ship?
Not in Germany, they renamed it to MS Anne.
ššØāšš«šØāš
You mean the MS Anne
I see them on the back of full size computer cases and on docks. They will often be one SS port on the top. I had no idea what it meant before now.
Also don't forget the dubious AliExpress devices that have all these symbols, no data lines, Vcc at 12V and ground attached to a loose M8 nut.
I guess they could have a USB certification body, kinda like UL is for wall power devices, and require that a device have an certification ID number on it that you could look up in their online database to qualify. I mean, you could forge a fake number that doesn't map to anything, but I feel like that's a higher bar than just throwing a USB symbol on there. Like, you gotta know that you're doing something fraudulent in that case.
investigates
Huh.
Apparently UL does certify USB devices. I have no idea how to tell whether a UL-marked device of a given age is certified to do what from the logo alone, though. I guess you could look it up with UL.
https://www.ul.com/services/ul-taiwan-usb-test-lab
I bet that only my high-power USB chargers have it, though. Honestly, I didn't even know that they covered USB, wouldn't have looked for a UL mark on USB devices.
investigates
Well, my Logitech F710 gamepad does have a UL mark. That's some proprietary wireless protocol, uses AA batteries. Not USB and doesn't plug into the wall. Dunno whether they certified it for wireless or power safety or whatever.
looks further
I have a wired USB gamepad with a bunch of Chinese characters, the URL "www.izdtech.com", no USB labels, and no UL mark.
I have a wired/wireless USB 8Bitdo gamepad with a CE mark, USB symbols, and no UL mark (I understand that CE doesn't work like UL. It doesn't indicate that any independent organization has tested the device, just is a concise way to state that the device manufacturer states that the device conforms to some set of standards).
I have a 100W USB PD "Nekteck" charger with a UL mark and some ID number that looks to be associated with that, no CE mark, an FCC mark that I assume is related to RF interference compliance, an enormous USB standard mark with the 100 watt capability listed, and some sort of mark with a box inside another box that I don't recognize.
I have an SIIG USB audio interface that has no USB labels, a CE mark, an FCC mark, and no UL mark.
I have a USB-powered audio mixer that has no USB labels, no FCC mark, no UL mark and a CE mark.
I have a laptop USB charger that has no USB labels, a CE mark, multiple UL marks, one of which appears to be in some sort of teardrop-looking thing, some "UK CA" mark that I assume is some kind of UK regulatory body. It's got that same mysterious "box in a box" mark that I saw before, "VI" in a circle, a picture of a house, some "NYCE" mark, and a "NOM" mark.
I bet that most people have basically no idea what any of this means. I probably know what more of it means than the average person, but definitely not enough to extract a whole lot of information from this. And all of these have a different set of marks; there is no least-common-denominator mark.
Don't confuse a CE mark with a CE mark
Nope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CE_marking#%22China_Export%22
Kind of https://cemarking.net/chinese-export/
Additionally, USB 3.0, 3.1 and 3.2 labels provide no information on the speed. Rather, "Gen 1" means 5Gb/s, Gen 2 means 10 and Gen 2Ć2 means 20Gb/s. These "Gen" labels are seldom found on products however.
So for example USB 3.2 Gen 1 is 5Gb/s while USB 3.1 Gen 2 is 10Gb/s
The dear people at the USB Forum should be rewarded with the Nobel prize in namology for their clear, superior and non-confusing naming scheme and naming process that even the nerdiest of nerds can't follow.
This has already been fixed by the forum FYI, the new spec is to just put clear text labels that denote the capability of the port. I can't find the article I read but this one has an example of the new user-facing branding.
https://tidbits.com/2022/09/29/usb-simplifies-branding/
That's cool. But even though it finally adds simplicity, it's still yet another renaming of the same things.
Here's a snippet from an article from 2019:
Reading that I want to shoot myself, and even the latest change, which probably is a good one, drives me slightly mad due to the history of renaming everything so many times.
Every time a new USB spec comes out the version number goes up. A new spec comes out because they add more features. The spec is a whitepaper that explains all the features. It's a "The King is dead, long live the king!" situation.
If you just never used the version numbers to mean something that they never meant (transfer speeds) then literally none of this is confusing.
They've officially renamed the transfer speeds one time after people made a big huff. here's how they changed:
USB SuperSpeed -> USB 5Gbps
USB SuperSpeed 10Gbps -> USB 10Gbps
USB SuperSpeed 20Gpbs -> USB 20Gbps
And If you can't follow along with that, I'm really, really sorry. There's not much I can do from a internet discussion board. XD
Yes, I am the only one confused. It's not like half the tech internet blew a gasket over how confusing and bad the renaming of the generations were. Just me. I guess I should just read the whitepapers of every standard going forward, silly me.
Well if there's anything I expect from the new-cycle masses, it's rationality.
Heaven forbid, we try and do better!
You don't have to read whitepapers to know the difference between Ethernet, CAT6 and RJ45 even if your grandpa doesn't know the difference.
It's not too much to expct the "nerds" to know the real names of PAN connections, too.
I aspire to be as cool as you.
The problem with using English anything is that while English is the most-widely-used language in the world, there are still a lot of people out there who don't know it.
The US has a history of just using English text for everything, because most people in the US can do English. Over in Europe, where the language situation is more-fragmented, I think that there's more push for using symbols, which...can have benefits, though it also means that everyone has to learn some symbols.
Maybe "STOP" or "ON" and "OFF" or something aren't that hard to learn. My gut is that maybe we could expect just about everyone in the world to learn a super-minimal subset of English using all-capital Latin letters or something for labeling purposes. "ON", "OFF", "STOP", "YES", "NO", "CANCEL", "POWER", "ERROR", "RESET", "UP", "DOWN", maybe something along those lines. Kinda like a pidgin English designed for devices. But that thing has "CERTIFIED", hardly the first thing someone learns. Also, it appears to have built a US trademark indicator and registered trademark indicator into various official labels, which I think is kind of funny. Like, if the USB guys go out and alter the registration status of their trademarks, are they gonna change the labels, and is everyone gonna go alter their plastic molds and whatever?
Imagine all that text was a bunch of Chinese and imagine how palatable that'd be for the US market. Okay, it's easier to learn the (small) Latin alphabet than Chinese characters, which maybe makes learning basic words easier, but I can't recognize a single Chinese character.
I mean, don't get me wrong. I speak English. I'd rather have descriptive English than a bunch of obscure and sometimes similar-looking symbols, myself. But I don't feel like this is all that ideal, either, not from a global standpoint.
All so sales people can slap on a 3.2 sticker over the 3.1 that was on top of the 3.0 sticker...
Do people care? You just plug in your thing and it works, fast enough in most of the cases.
Why can't I tether my phone to my laptop with two out of three of my cables?
I have an Android phone with a USB-C port and a laptop with (several) USB-C ports.
I have three cables that I carry with me: a USB-C-to-USB-C cable, a second USB-C-to-USB-C cable, and a USB-A-to-USB-C cable. None of these are charging-only power cables, and I've used them for data connections.
One of the USB-C-to-USB-C -- an unmarked cable -- permits for USB tethering to be used.
The other two do not.
The other USB-C-to-USB-C cable even has USB 3.1 symbol.
I don't know why.
Looking more-closely, it looks like the other two don't have a data connection established between the Android phone and the laptop from the laptop's perspective. They've let me do so with other devices.
Checking what data transfer rates a given cable supports electrically
As far as I can tell, there isn't a way to query the "e-marker" on a USB cable from Linux today; I found a comment from someone saying that kernel support is still being worked on. You can use
lsusb -tto show the negotiated speed between two devices, so can use them to infer the speed, as long as you have fast-enough devices at both ends of the cable.https://lemmy.world/post/18014298
What USB PD rates does a USB cable or power consumer or charger support?
I don't know of a good way to determine this from a user standpoint. Note that this is a matrix of voltages and currents, so it isn't just "I support up to rate X". Also, not all devices display the rate of power that they are providing or consuming -- in fact, most don't. My Android phone, a reasonably-sophisticated device and one with a display and capable of both providing or consuming power, doesn't show the rate of power consumption or provision, just "slow" or "fast", without additional software. I understand that that software doesn't work on all Android hardware.
I have -- had -- a laptop that just won't charge if a charger doesn't support a certain USB PD profile, which its provided charger did but not all charging devices did.
When I plug in two devices that both support USB PD, which is the consumer and which the provider?
When I'm in my car, I typically I have three devices that have USB PD ports and can either provide or consume power -- a large powerstation, a laptop, and a phone. I eventually learned a few facts:
First, the direction in which power is being provided via USB PD is independent of which device is operating as a USB host or device using USB OTG ports; it's possible for the direction to be different from the direction of power provision.
Second, apparently the direction of host/device order is random, and devices just remember the host/device direction for a certain amount of time, so that if you plug two USB OTG devices into each other and the direction is not what you want, the idea is that you can figure it out from one or more of the devices indicating this and then unplug them and plug them in again to get transfer in the other direction.
Third, as best I can tell empirically, USB PD does the same random thing.
This creates all kinds of fun if one device powers off and then on again or something; my laptop can start draining its power to my powerstation (generally not what I want), or my phone to my laptop, since all the USB PD ports in question support USB PD in both directions.
Which end is which on an active USB cable?
I have an active optical USB cable, which I obtained so that I could put my computer in a closet, a long way from the rest of my devices; USB on copper has very limited range at present-day speeds without a repeater. It functions in only one direction in terms of data transfer (and obviously can't move power). That particular manufacturer labeled it, though there's no standard for labeling that.
In sum
USB does have reasonably good fallback, so most cables and most devices tend to sort of do something to some degree -- they move some amount of power and some rate of data, though some devices have hard demands on what they need and there isn't a great way to assess what a cable or device supports in most cases from an end user standpoint. But it definitely could be a lot better from my standpoint.
I'd also add that while I have rarely had problems with it -- only came up with one USB-powered analog audio mixer that had less-than-amazing power circuitry and bled noise from dirty power being provided by USB through into the audio signal, and where I put it on a dedicated charger -- USB power can be stupendously dirty. I was watching some guy with an oscilloscope investigate various devices, and all those sensitive devices are accepting all kinds of craziness in terms of power. I'm surprised that USB power sources aren't required to provide some hard guarantees on what they can do in terms of load and response.
Correct.
USB X.X is the name of the technical whitepaper that describes the standard.
For a long time, USB had three transfer rates. The first legacy speed (slowest) was hardly ever used. The Second was called "Full Speed" and the fastest was called "Hi-speed". Because people could not remember which if these two were faster, they referred to the whitepapers in which they were introduced.
When later versions of USB were introduced people have tried to continue this mental "shortcut" and have caused themselves nothing but confusion.
Every device I have just has a couple of blue ones and a couple of black ones, perhaps some orange ones and some USB-C ports, and good luck figuring out what they all can do. No symbols anywhere.
It's cool, the colors are just for aesthetics. Internally they're all connected to the same USB controller chip anyway.
/s probably
Edit: it was a joke. I know blue means 3.
If they're following the standard, which they often do but sometimes don't, white indicates 2.0 and blue indicates 3.0+. I think there are more but I don't remember the other colours.
Blue is a convention to indicate USB 3. Of course, not everyone actually implements that, and USB-C ports don't, as far as I know, do that at all, just USB-A.
My current desktop does both -- the case has USB ports on the top that come off a USB header from the motherboard, which have a simple number "3.0" pointing at its USB-A ports in front, but uses black plastic for them. The motherboard's USB connectors in back use the "blue plastic" convention on its USB-A 3 ports, and black plastic on its USB-A 2 ports. The motherboard also labels the USB 3 ports by having a text label reading "USB 3.2", which isn't listed on OP's set of symbols, and puts symbols on them.
Black is USB 2, blue is USB 3, and Orange or Yellow are usually "always on" and/or 2.4 amp or some other kind of thing like that.
Not on all vendors tho - coloring was an optional part of the standard. Dell often uses grey for USB3
It's the variety and surprise here that adds novelty and excitement to life.
https://www.usbmemorydirect.com/blog/usb-port-colors/
I definitely have a number of devices that use newer-than-USB 3.0 and use blue.
I don't think any of my devices actually use teal, regardless of what they support. Oh...hmm. Wait, I think my last desktop motherboard did that.
goes to investigate
Yeah, it has teal and blue ports.
My current motherboard uses blue or red for everything USB-A, so clearly isn't using blue to indicate "USB 3.0", and labels every port, blue or red, in English as "USB 3.2". So it clearly isn't using the port color to indicate purely speed.
Another source of novelty and excitement.
So much excitement.
I believe yellow or orange ports always deliver charging power regardless of device's power state.
Most devices don't have theese symbols and basically say fuck you unless you know how to find the specs
Meanwhile my thumb drive:
The best I can do is 20Mbps with the curve xy = 1
Mine is worse, it says it can do way more than 20Mbps, but once the buffer is exhausted, it hangs frequently. And this isn't some random POS from AliExpress, I bought it retail at BestBuy.
Like that guarantees quality.
It certainly doesn't, but it's understandable for users to expect that paying a premium at a place like BestBuy should result in getting a better product that picking up something on Amazon.
I generally do my research, but in this case, I needed it in a pinch to flash a Linux ISO to get my computer up and running because I couldn't find any of my other ones. I expected to get ripped off, so I'm not too mad about it, but I was surprised at how crappy it was since I figured USB drives are largely a solved problem.
And this is why I largely avoid BestBuy and steer others from it, stuff costs more (though they do match if you ask), and they tend to carry crappy accessories and peripherals. It's basically Walmart quality crap priced higher than better products at Microcenter, all because customers either don't know better or don't have any other retail options.
If you're ok with some bulk, go for an nvme enclosure. I have a sabrent one with a 256 GB crucial gen 3 drive in it, it's a slow cheap drive, still substantially better than any usb key and you can put one together for under $100 cad including a longer high speed cable.
I just did a fresh install off of my usb key and wow, super slow compared to any time I've done off my enclosure
Good idea! I don't need it very often (like maybe once/year?), but I'll keep it in mind the next time I start looking for my USB drives again.
I just love that in a world with Power Delivery (PD) they decided that the best way to indicate Display Port (DP) was to have an ambiguous symbol involving a P and a D.
Hennimore!!!
exactly hahaaaaaa thought of this
DisplayPort not to be confused with display port, when someone asks you for a "display port cable" and you start going to pick one of VGA/HDMI/DVI cables instead.
The P and D symbol is the DisplayPort logo. I'm not sure when it was first used, but the DisplayPort standard itself is quite a bit older than USB Power Delivery.
It's still confusing though regardless of which can lay the best claim to the letters P and D. I would have suggested Power Delivery could use some sort of lightning bolt symbol, but then I realised that would probably conflict with Thunderbolt, which also uses USB-C.
It's almost as if having all these different features would be easier to differentiate if they had different physical shapes.
Yeah, Display Port is old, but I've never seen that P and D symbol before, or at least never noticed it. And, even if it existed before Display Port over USB, you'd think that that potential confusion was a good opportunity to come up with a new logo for something that would be put next to a USB port.
I think the goal was always that you'd only ever need one type of port and one type of cable and that that port and cable could do anything. Unfortunately, because there are so many revisions and so many features are optional, you've now got a situation where the port is the right shape, the cable fits into the port, but you can't get the thing to work without reading the fine print, or without decoding obscure logos.
How about a monitor/TV for display.
I like that battery for power, though a vertical battery would be clearer.
I like how they (seem to) try to get away from Latin alphabet, just to go with DP for display port.
Also, giving anything the initials "DP" is weird and creepy as fuck, given that "DP" was already a well-established acronym in the porn industry years before DisplayPort was even conceptualized.If you're going to forbid any 2-letter initialism because it might have naughty connotations, you're not going to be left with many options.
Given that there are engineers involved I wouldn't be at all surprised if that was deliberate. Trying to get potentially offensive or otherwise NSFW acronyms past marketing without them noticing is practically an industry-wide joke at this point, which is why they are so prevalent in the FOSS space. (no marketing staff to complain)
If that's true in this case, though, hats off to whoever managed to get it though to official commercial standards
person with the initials DP has left the chat crying
Dungeon Party
USB keeps changing their own standard every 2 years why bother learning it.
Pshh, speak for yourself. I'm ready for USB 3.2 gen 5 pro ultra max
But will that be better or worse than USB 3.3 gen 2 extra super speed?
Both, of course.
Will USB 3 get an update now USB4 is out?
Eh, USB4 is basically what USB 3.3 would've been, but with fresh branding. I expect it to have the same naming issues after a few updates...
Wasn't USB4 based on Thunderbolt 3?
Sort of? It borrows a lot of the high speed protocol bits from Thunderbolt 3, but I think it does DP a little differently (at least it supports different DP standards than TB3). So it's closely related, but not necessarily the same thing.
Was that the first one that had M Bison as a playable character?
We're not calling it that anymore. It's been rebranded to "SuperDuper Speed USB ]|[" now. Note that this is a different standard than the previous "SuperDuper Speed USB 3," and under no circumstances should you call it "SuperDuper Speed USB 3.0," because there was never any such spec and pedantic nerds will climb up your nose in the comments if you ever utter it.
And Knuckles
I mean, they update the standard to add new things. Is that bad?
They also change existing terms for no good reason.
The don't.
But give me an example of what you're talking about. I'll explain.
USB3.2 gen 2, USB3.2 Gen2x2
The consumer facing names for those transmission specs are and have always been:
SuperSpeed 10 Gbps
SuperSpeed 20 Gbps
Unless you're designing your own circuits you don't need to worry about signaling rates (ie "Gen") or lane configuration (ZĆY).
SuperSpeed is not a "legacy" name.
It's the name of a transfer rate.
I do not trust the maker of this infographic if they cannot understand some basic facts.
Who the hell makes a type-c port that only runs at 2.0 speeds?
iPhone 15, Samsung A series phones and tablets, most Motorola devices, most oppo devices, most realme devices, most nothing devices, most xiaome devices, and many more
I find it hilarious that Apple did that with the iPhone 15. Gave the current technology to only the pro models š
They are such grimy bastards I swear, probably saved $1 just to make you pic the pro
bet they didn't save anything and it's the same chip just artificially limited
Many cheaper smartphones have 2.0 USB C
Many expensive ones too. The iPhone 15 runs at USB 2.0 speeds, despite having USB-C.
And even fucking iPhone 16!
(But doesn't pretty much all non apple flagships support minimum 3.0?
My headphones have a USB c port and connects at USB 2 speeds.
My headphones (Sennheiser Momentum 4) have Bluetooth, USB, and phone jack support. When using Bluetooth mode with the latest firmware update, they sporadically shut down while using in Bluetooth Multipoint mode.
I used headphones for decades very happily with a 1/8th inch jack.
They weren't perfect.
Some devices used a 1/4 inch jack. This at least was electrically-compatible, so one just needed a cheap, appropriately-shaped piece of metal to adapt them.
The 1/8th inch jack connector took up enough space that the smartphone guys eventually mostly banished it from phones, to try to get a bit more space in the device.
There wasn't a standard impedance. While most consumer devices used more-or-less the same impedance (and if you had to, you could just adjust the volume up or down slightly with different headphones) some higher-end headphones required a headphones amplifier that could push more power.
When you plugged a device in, it briefly shorted the connector, and made a lot of noise.
It wasn't wireless (which could be seen as a minus or plus, depending upon whether you wanted ability to walk away from a computer in exchange for a set of other complexities and issues).
It couldn't transmit power (well, not much; there was a convention for doing so that didn't become widespread). That became more significant with the rise of headphones with active noise cancellation, which would need at least some way to get power to the headphones.
But honestly, those were mostly pretty minor problems. Headphones just worked in virtually all cases.
I didn't have to worry about whether-or-not my headphones supported a given sampling rate, the number of devices that could connect to my headphones, wireless interference, or physical plug compatibility aside from the 1/8th inch and 1/4 inch issue (well, and occasionally 2.5mm headset connectors on phones). USB audio didn't resolve the calibrated volume issue, one of the few annoyances I had with the analog connector. I have one set of Bluetooth headphones that start breaking up when I leave the room with the transceiver and another that work flawlessly across the house. I have charging rates to worry about, and whether the device is smart enough to have a battery management system capable of prolonging battery life by shutting off charging at appropriate points. The protocol and physical connector for telephone jacks has changed twice over the past hundred+ years, once to add a ring (for stereo) and once to move from 1/4 inch to 1/8th inch. The Bluetooth and USB standards, while providing for some level of backwards compatibility, have changed like some people change socks. There are different audio protocols (and in some cases competing audio codecs, like LDAC vs aptX). Lossy compression becomes an issue with Bluetooth. Some devices don't support some sampling rates; analog headphones don't care. Having (effectively) zero-latency pass-through mixing is guaranteed doable with any analog headphones with the appropriate mixer, so that one can hear some other audio source live; that's not an option with Bluetooth or USB headphones.
I do like active noise cancellation, and the wireless functionality can occasionally be handy (though in general, it isn't a game-changer for me). But I feel like the user experience has gotten a lot more problematic, in general.
There are at least 4 different incompatible 1/8" TRRS standards.
You couldn't have picked a worse example.
You'd be surprised. My mouse only needs 2.0, but uses a C connector for compatibility. It provides an A to C cable with only 2.0 wiring, which is a decision I assume they made to allow the wire to be more flexible as it can be charged during use or used entirely wired.
Same with my keyboard, and I appreciate the compatibility. If it doesn't need anything faster than 2.0 speeds, there's no reason to include more expensive parts.
It's also important to permit use of adapters for backwards compatibility. Like, if we stop having computers with A ports, there are still gonna be some very expensive devices out there that have A ports. You aren't going to throw out your electron microscope with a USB A port because the USB guys have decided that USB-C being reversible is cool.
Oh totally. I have a pile of RS-232 adapters that you still need to program just about every modern Ethernet switch, and they're all type-A ports.
USB Hi-speed transfer rate are just fine for devices that need to charge regularly but frequently transfer data wirelessly.
USB 2.0 stopped being a relevant whitepaper in late 2001.
A small correction on USB PD...
It's not just USB PD that supports power delivery: Standard USB from way back in 1.0 also supports power delivery to devices as standard, but it's only up to 100mA in USB 1.0, 500mA in USB 2.0 and 900mA in USB 3.0, all at 5V.
USB PD is a dedicated power delivery USB protocol that supports much higher currents (up to 5A) as well as dynamically configured voltages (so, not fixed as 5V anymore) though it's all negotiated so your 5V-only phones isn't going to just get burned with 20V from a USB PD charger.
Since Power = Current * Voltage USB PD can put out quite a lot of power for supporting devices (the maximum depending on what both sides support), which means much faster transmission of power via USB which for example means faster charging of chargeable devices via USB with USB PD.
Anyways, the point being that even really old USB 1.0 can charge your device (just really really slow, though you'll be hard pressed to find anything that doesn't support at least USB 2.0 which can send 5x the current of 1.0 hence charge 5x faster than it), and that standard charging speed goes up with each new Standard USB generation since each has a higher maximum current than the previous one, so for example a standard USB 3.1 charger without USB PD support can still push a nice amount of power down the line to charge devices. It's just that with USB PD things really take off (though only up to a shared maximum that both sides support) and it can push enough power to support larger devices such as full-blown monitors or even charging notebooks.
Also PD extended range or something goes up to 48V 5A
"Universal"
My dick fits into all of them
Seems pretty universal to me š
I legit have never seen the battery used at all. They often use a plug, a lightning bolt confusingly, or don't even label it at all.
USB in 1996: Let's make one connector that handles everything
USB in 2024: Let's make one connector do thirty different incompatible combinations of things
To be fair, the goal is the same.
The USB forum can only solve points 4 and 5 without raising costs on the cheapest hardware.
While USB is now needlessly complicated and poorly labeled for consumer understanding, at least it succeeds in being backwards compatible so long as the physical connectors match (and all you need is a dumb adapter to convert any connector). If you have a 3.0 port on one device, a 2.0 port on the other device, and a 3.1 cable, you get 2.0 transfer speeds.
HDMI has the same kind of "issue". Whatever the specs on each component, throughput and features drop to the lowest common denominator when in use.
USB ports are not labeled with numbers. You just made up numbers to name several different things.
This is why you think things are "poorly labled". Your headcannon is broken, not the labeling.
USB in 1996: lets let you plug any device into the back of your computer.
USB in 2024: phones, tablets laptops are going to charge at crazy voltages and we're going to show you 8k video all over the same port and you can insert it in both directions and we're still going to connect any device to any device.
That meme sucked
All they had to do was require stamped icons on the ends of the plugs in the spec, and instead we have the current cable mystery clusterfuck š¤¦
I think that maybe having two similar lightning bolt symbols that mean different things wasn't the best design decision that the USB guys could have made.
lol the whole history of usb is full of design fuckyous
USB-A: the 4 dimensional port.
I mean, they fixed that with USB-C (after introducing one small USB port, mini-USB, that wasn't reversible, with the tensioners that wear out on the expensive (device) side and and then introducing micro-USB which fixed the tensioners but still wasn't reversible).
I'd personally kind of like to have magnetic breakaway connectors or similar so that I can't damage devices if they fall, especially given that micro-USB and USB-C aren't the most-physically-robust of connectors. Adapters with proprietary ways to do this exist:
https://www.amazon.com/MoKo-Magnetic-Adapter-Straight-Thunderbolt/dp/B0CGLM6PYN
But they aren't part of the USB spec. If they ever switch to something like that, we're gonna have another phase of incompatibility.
as easy as it is to shit on usb, kids these days will never know the misery of having a different, un-hub-able, proprietary port for every device: ps/2 for mouse and keyboard, 1/8th inch audio or SPDIF for anything audio, SCSI, parallel/serial ports, etc etc
The 'Thunderbolt' symbol is Intel's proprietary technology. Apple and Intel made it. First apple registered Thunderbolt as a trademark but later they transferred it to Intel. The lightning bolt icon which supports fast charging phones or other devices when connected to the laptop is different and developed by the USB guys.
Things are muddied a bit though because USB 4 has built in support for thunderbolt
Everything defined in the Thunderbolt 3 spec was incorporated into the USB 4 spec, so Thunderbolt 3 and USB 4 should be basically identical. In reality the two standards are enforced by different certification bodies, so some hardware manufacturers can't really market their compliance with one or the other standard until they get that certification. Framework's laptops dealt with that for a while, where they represented that their ports supported certain specs that were basically identical to the USB 4 spec or even the Thunderbolt 4 spec, but couldn't say so until after units had already been shipping.
One should note that though Thunderbolt over USB-C offers the same speed and connectivity as a native thunderbolt cable, the native cable can be 40m long whereas the USB-C implementation is max 2m
Brother, now that thunderbolt 4 has been introduced it's even more confusing. Some of these labels are already out of date
Handy guide, but this whole USB situation is a cock-up, since it needs the freakin guide in the first place.
Meh, while there really could be less. At least they are all physically compatible. And backwards protocol compatible to the lowest common denominator. Which is a huge step forward.
Seriously, as an IT person, I still never know what most of my USB ports are capable of, but I'm glad they are backwards compatible. If something is slow, then I try a different cable and port.
They mostly support an electrical least-common-denominator (like, I have USB devices that won't accept USB PD for charging below a given level), but they definitely aren't all physically-compatible. There are a lot of physical USB connectors.
Thank you, I had almost forgotten that you can't make a comment on the Internet without someone misunderstanding even basic assumptions. Like in this case, a picture exclusively showing usb-c, could be assumed that a comment about it, would also be referring to usb-c.
P.S. (I'm fully aware the last one is usb-a, the writer even makes note of it and why they included it).
There nothing in the comment that you are responding to or OP's original post that is specific to USB-C. OP references USB-A and USB-C both, and the comment you responded to doesn't specify USB-C.
What about red USB-A ports, and USB-C ports with no symbol by them at all (like on phones and desktop PCs)?
On desktop PCs, Depending upon the Motherboard manufacturer and model series, it could either mean nothing other than some gaming marketing jargon or...
When a motherboard has both red and blue ports, the Red ones could be those connected directly to the CPU lanes for USB, with the blue ones being routed through the PCH.
If there is just one red coloured USB A port, it might be designated for BIOS updates (unless they have another colour for that).
On gigabyte boards, red ports were/are signifying their "ON/OFF charge" and "3x power" gimmicks. Basically means that it's a usb 2.0, with 1.5A limit over normal 500mA, and remains powered when the PC is turned off.
I've literally never seen any of these except the top symbol.
I've never seen any of the SS 10gig or USB PD icons, but I've seen the rest. I've got Thunderbolt icons on at least 2 icons and SS USB 3.1 icons on many normal USB A ports.
Well, except all the legacy symbols on devices older than current gen.
Came here disappointed to see no one said anything about Black D inside white P
Edit: yes, I have the humour of a 16 yo
It's the other way around š
I know, but it doesn't really work that way š
The standard might be complicated if you want the specifics, but for everyday use it's incredibly simple, and I love it. The number of times I needed this information is 1, even though most of my devices, including an external monitor, are USB-C.
Yeah. I grew up in the days of serial ports and parallel ports, and USB in general is so much better for most purposes. (I recall plugging my first mouse into the serial port...but wait! Where will my Hayes Smartmodem modem plug into then? Also, don't plug and unplug things from the serial port while the computer is running.)
And USB-C is even better. My tablet needs a charge? Well my laptop charger is right here... My phone is low and needs a quick charge? Well my USB-C tablet charger will give it a decent boost very quickly. No worries about getting it plugged in the wrong way, either.
I have a docking station for my work laptop, so when I had to replace my personal laptop, a laptop that supported USB-C power delivery was mandatory. I don't use it with the docking station very often, but knowing I can without an issue is great. My wife also has a Macbook that works on the docking station, too, in case she ever wants to use my dual monitor setup. All three laptops, from three different brands, are just plug in and go.
I can't imagine how you think it's incredibly simple. These things are hell to explain to pretty much any normal person who needs to know why there's no picture on the monitor or why their laptop/phone is not charging, or why the keyboard isn't working in BIOS (no USB 3 support so you gotta switch to a USB 2 port). Add to that the combinatorial complexity of different cables and hubs supporting different things, and no tools for troubleshooting what feature is missing (and where in the chain) or what is suboptimal.
Worse, sometimes it's my boss who thinks they can cheap out and get a USBC dock instead of a proper dock, forcing me to run at non-native lower resolutions or unable to use a second screen.
Why not label the ports and cables with:
It's future proof and doesn't need a decoder manual other than basic literacy. It can be in whatever language the fucking keyboard is. If you want to be redundant but even more clear:
Amps are not power
So do like they did for video and put 2A @ 5V on the label. Now you have power.
Edit: clarity
But if its USB PD it can be more than 5V though.
That's why you specify it there:
2A@5-15V or something.
Sorry. I must have missed that. I am working on 3 hours of sleep rn due to a flight I need to catch.
Ah. GL with your flight.
Why use more words when less is easier.
Fewer. Sorry, pet peeve of mine. If you can count the thing, it's fewer, not less.
I was trying for this. Probably should have have just pasted it.
The superiority of german aryan ports proven once again.
(this is a joke, nazism is evil and I hate it)
yet all I needed is a "this side up" symbol ...
Honestly, I didn't really have an issue with USB type A ports. They worked fine, and it was only a minor inconvenience to orient them the right way. I cared far more about capabilities of the port (speed, power delivery, etc) than I did about the actual port.
That said, micro-USB sucks in every way. The awkward "is this the right way?" thing is way worse than with USB-A, it's not meaningfully smaller than mini-USB, the port is incredibly hard to clean (and it always gets dirty), and the connector seems to break all the time. I would've been totally fine with moving everything to mini-USB instead. The connector was less flimsy without being that much bigger, and it had room for more wires.
I do like USB-C though, I'm just not sure the added complexity is worth it.
I believe that the reason that the smaller USB variants showed up was because some devices were just too small to physically accommodate a USB-A plug. Think MP3 players and later -- very importantly -- smartphones.
For the vast majority of consumer electronics, USB-A is fine. But for things that are as thin as possible, usually to fit into a pocket, it starts to bump up against limits.
Mini-USB put the tensioners -- the bit that wears out over time, is the bottleneck on the lifetime of the thing -- on the (expensive) device rather than the (cheap) cable. Micro-USB and USB-C didn't make that mistake.
Like, I think that there was a legitimate reason to fix that one way or another.
Sure, and I had a handful that used mini-USB instead of micro-USB, and they were completely fine. It's easy to quickly look at the plug and orient it the right way, whereas with micro-USB, it's a fair bit harder.
I don't think I ever had a mini-USB device wear out the port. Then again, I didn't have a ton of them, so maybe it's more common.
Regardless, USB-C feels like an over-engineered solution to a few small problems. The ability to use it in any orientation is nice I guess, but I still have similar problems that I had w/ micro-USB, with cables wearing out over time. I'd rather we optimize for easier to swap ports (i.e. something like the Framework laptop's changeable ports).
Word
Typically, the side of the plug with the USB logo is "up". There are exceptions.
Also typically, if a USB port is vertical, up is to the left. Again, there are exceptions.
I've never seen the one enclosed in a battery, but I've seen the rest.
"Basic"
Itās useful but it got me even more lost š
So many different standards my god.
Thanks for succinctly explaining what thunderbolt is
That is not what I'm suggesting. I'm not saying charging only cables shouldn't exist. I'm saying what everything does should be clearer.
Those will legally do pretty much anything depending on what cable you use anyway. (and what cable you end up using is pretty much a surprise until you've tested it.)
All thanks to USB making our lives more simple. (yay)
Ok, I suppose it is more simple in quite a few ways.
Every computer store should have a poster about this.
I can't even find a decent PCIE USB/Thunderbolt card (one that support VFIO would be nice and actually has a Linux kernel driver, so ASM and Renesas are both out..)
some additional info about USB. If your cable/connector is old, idk how old is requred, the names and standards are actually completely different now than they used to be, but they're adopted into the new standards, so you have to keep this in mind when trying to recognize this stuff.
thanks USB forum, you guys are the best :)
Now do the cables š
holy shit. thanks, usb.
Oh... Oh!
No symbol for power-only ports?
These are found almost exclusively on PC/laptops/tablets. Which I've never seen a power port only on.
Would be nice to have a standard indicator on the cable side of things.
Insert thank you gif
What are you going to do with this, hang it on your wall like a chord chart?
ai generated lol
What's AI generated?
Me. Sigh.
The text. And probably images too (but the only mistake being the wrong port depiction (all c) says more human).