Intel has released a rendering of the new USB Type C connector, which is reversible so no more jokes about "USB cables exist in the fourth dimension". The new connector is smaller than the Type A connector that we're all used to seeing on our desktops and laptops and looks to be slightly larger than the micro-B connector found on most smart phones and tablets.
From the article:
Unlike today's USB connectors, which requires a user to correctly orient the plug, USB 3.1 Type-C cable is reversible. Initially, the USB 3.1 Type-C specification will support up to 10Gbps data transfer speeds.
The Type-C connector and cable will support scalable power charging in order to grow with future USB bus performance requirements. The first iteration will have a 5 volt power transfer rate, but that is expected to deliver up to 100 watts for higher power applications.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 03 2014, @11:43AM
> released a rendering of the new USB Type C connector, which is reversible so no more jokes about "USB cables exist in the fourth dimension".
Yay, now we have vaporware. Much better.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by carguy on Thursday April 03 2014, @12:20PM
> Yay, now we have vaporware. Much better.
And if anyone tries to draw 100 Watts from that tiny connector...smoke ware!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Hairyfeet on Thursday April 03 2014, @11:47AM
So its the same speed as USB 3, yet breaks backwards compatibility so nothing that I own will actually work with the thing? Wel let me say...how about NO Intel, how about that? If a user is so damned dumb they can't plug a one way plug in the right way frankly they shouldn't be using outlets (one way for 100+ years) much less a computer and if the ONLY thing you can bring to the table is the breaking of a standard that works so well that you can take a USB 1.0 device and plug it into a USB 3.0 port without even having to wonder if it'll work? Sorry but that is worthless, please move along.
I only hope like Firewire and that thunderport or whatever its called you cooked up with Apple it gets duly ignored by the OEMs, no OEMs no port.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 3, Informative) by githaron on Thursday April 03 2014, @12:35PM
The more important feature is the new power options. Right now, a lot of tablets can not power off your computer's USB because the standard's power output is too low. They end up making non-standard cords that must use a wall-based charger.
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Thursday April 03 2014, @01:37PM
I love the idea of a reversible cable. No, I'm not dumb. I usually go to bed after my wife. The last thing I do is place my phone on a stand next to the bed and plug it in. I try to do it in the dark without disturbing her. I think a reversible connector might help.
As for obsoleting standards and all that, I do understand your concern. At least it's only a mechanical change, not an electrical one. How hard is an adapter?
Personally I would like to see one new connector standard. I want something with HDMI plus USB OTG but unlike MHL I want it to do both at the SAME TIME! Better yet, keep them separate connectors but standardize their orientation in relation to one another and the distance between them. Then plugs could be made that do both while still maintaining the ability to use them separately.
(Score: 2, Funny) by middlemen on Thursday April 03 2014, @01:50PM
I do it in the dark with your wife too but before you go to bed...
(Score: 1) by Grishnakh on Thursday April 03 2014, @03:07PM
What I want to know is: why the heck did it take them this long to standardize on a reversible connector for USB? OK, I'll give them a pass for USB1.0, and maybe 1.1, but after that when USB started getting used for everything, and people complained about how it only goes in one way, but the rectangular shell doesn't make it obvious which way, they should have made a reversible connector for the newer standards. Instead, we went through the mini, micro, 2.0, and 3.0 connectors/standards before we finally got here, over the course of about 2 decades.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday April 03 2014, @03:57PM
Or hell, just add a bit of plastic filler to the sides of the plug "casing" (or whatever you call it) so the whole plug assembly is trapezoidal like the microUSB plug. Then standardize on devices "narrow side = up or to the right."
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by contrapunctus on Thursday April 03 2014, @06:23PM
Because they saw the lightning connector and facepalmed.
(Score: 1) by Grishnakh on Thursday April 03 2014, @06:36PM
Or, why didn't they just make a non-rectangular connector to begin with? The original FireWire connector wasn't rectangular; it was plainly obvious which way it went in (and trying to insert it backwards wouldn't work, nor would it damage the connector).
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday April 03 2014, @06:55PM
The USB symbol goes on top (or to the right if you are dealing with side mounts) and unless your fingers are completely numb you should be able to feel the symbol etched in the plastic, how hard is that?
While I agree this is something that should have ben dealt with waaay back with USB 1.1 frankly we have so damned many things that are USB now I'd hate to start dealing with the adapter mess with USB. After all will the adapter carry power, or just data? Will it support USB 3, USB 2, or just the HID USB 1/1.1 stuff? USB has been as close to a "universal plug" as we've ever had and I'd sure hate to see that get screwed up. Why not make it close enough electrically to USB 1/2/3 that you can just use a plug style adapter like we use to convert headphones from large to small? at least that way you could just keep the adapter on the cable and be done with it.
As for those that complain about USB 2+ not having enough power? I thought we solved that ages ago with USB splitter cables, where you have one end for data+power and a second end just to get extra juice.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 1) by urza9814 on Thursday April 03 2014, @08:27PM
IBM Thinkpad with an LG charger plugged in on the right side of the laptop. I'm currently looking at the USB symbol. It faces forward. From a side view it faces left.
There's also an indented LG symbol on the other side of the cable, and it isn't immediately obvious by feel alone which of those indentations is the USB symbol.
I mean I still think this new standard is pretty asinine. Breaks compatibility for no reason and I don't see it making it any easier to plus stuff in. Probably harder, I hate those tiny plugs, USB A is the perfect size. But anyway, point is that any rule you come up will be broken. And IBM and LG aren't exactly the no-name Chinese knockoffs you'd expect that from.
(Score: 1) by Grishnakh on Thursday April 03 2014, @08:34PM
The USB symbol goes on top (or to the right if you are dealing with side mounts) and unless your fingers are completely numb you should be able to feel the symbol etched in the plastic, how hard is that?
Not all cables have the symbol etched in like that. Also, USB thumb drives almost never do; they can have wildly different designs. Maybe when they created the standard back in the early 90s, they envisioned everyone using the same standard USB cables and connectors like this, but things turned out very differently. Now we've got things like voice recorders with pop-out USB-A plugs, thumb drives of all different casing designs, etc.
As for the adapter mess, we already had this before this new connector. The USB-A connector is pretty close to a "universal plug", but when you start looking at all the other versions (mini-A, micro-A, mini-USB3 with power, etc.), it's just a big mess.
I do have to wonder what the heck we need 100W (20V @ 5A) for in a USB-connected device. If your device needs more than a USB hard drive, there's something wrong (and don't forget, devices are going lower-power these days; spinning HDs are on the way out to be replaced by lower-power SSDs). That's a huge amount of power to be routing through a motherboard and then through a small multi-pin connector.
(Score: 2) by Boxzy on Thursday April 03 2014, @10:51PM
...At least it's only a mechanical change, not an electrical one. How hard is an adapter?
It's only a mechanical change NOW, imagine what happens when manufacturers start to design adapters and gadgets that rely on 100 watts flowing thru cables not designed for it? The likely results of that take me back to this old British advert.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWCK0hCxGjI [youtube.com]
Go green, Go Soylent.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Thursday April 03 2014, @06:35PM
I'm one of those 'so damned dumb' people. I cannot plugin a USB cable without trying three times.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday April 03 2014, @11:47AM
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Informative) by guises on Thursday April 03 2014, @03:36PM
For USB at least, the smaller ports are rated for larger numbers of insertions. I think it's 2,500 for type A, and 10,000 for micro.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday April 03 2014, @06:26PM
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Adrian Harvey on Thursday April 03 2014, @12:20PM
The current USB 3 micro connector is hideous
See: for a picture... https://www.usbgear.com/images/USB3-MAMB.jpg [usbgear.com]
So any replacement before there's too much of it in the market would be good.
(Score: 2) by Marneus68 on Thursday April 03 2014, @12:43PM
Nice opinion you have there.
The god thing about this "ugly" connector is that it's compatible with the standard Micro-USB connector, something that the new proposed connector can not do.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 03 2014, @03:08PM
In theory I like the Micro3 adapter. In practice, I see the average user "forcing" the connector if they don't line it straight at the port the first time resulting in the connector eventually being lifted from the circuit board. Basically what happened to the mini USB connectors on cell phones.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday April 03 2014, @07:00PM
I have seen a VGA plug with the pins all mashed up because someone tried to cram it into a serial port. I have read reports (some time ago) where people forced a 5.25 floppy to fit into a 3.5 using scissors.
It doesn't matter what the plug looks like, someone will find a way to break it.
(Score: 2) by Adrian Harvey on Thursday April 03 2014, @03:10PM
Yes, I shortened my opinion to save on typing :-). I get that it's compatible, and that engineering limitations will have forced them in to design compromises, but as a result of those compromises:
1. It's no longer micro (as in smaller than USB2 mini)
2. It's relatively fragile (in my experience)
3. It's not that easy to use the backwards compatibility as you have to carefully put the older cable into one half of the socket.
All of these make it a poor choice for (to name one use) a mobile phone charge/sync cable. Apple doesn't do USB3 yet, so a reversible connector with fast sync would give the others a jump up.
To some extent all the B type connectors chose an interesting route to adding extra connectors compared to the A type connectors. I can see why fitting extra pads into a micro connector might be a difficult job, but it's sad that the full size B couldn't be a clean upgrade too. I suspect that the cables being different already, a new connector was seen as not so bad.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by DrMag on Thursday April 03 2014, @12:40PM
My physics degrees are failing me here... I really don't get what is meant by a "5 volt power transfer rate". From the image in the article, it appears to suggest it can handle up to 3A (so 15W, 5A/25W for the connectors themselves, which compares nicely with the 100W future target).
I would hope it's not implying the 100W rate will come with an increase in voltage... that's really asking for trouble having a plug that's supposed to be universal connect devices to a port that's designed to use a much higher voltage than the device is itself designed to handle.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by cabraverde on Thursday April 03 2014, @12:56PM
If we're delivering 100W then I *do* hope we get more than 5V, because I personally do not want 20A of current flowing through such a small connector.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by DrMag on Thursday April 03 2014, @01:12PM
Fair enough.. But if they do that, they'll have to modify the current design of devices to be able to handle the, say, 20V/5A input in addition to the 5V/3A. I know I wouldn't like to try plugging my phone into that...
"5 volt power transfer rate" still makes no sense.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Foobar Bazbot on Thursday April 03 2014, @03:46PM
I expect that there will be some sort of negotiation -- the port will start at 5V, and every device must work at 5V (full functionality may need more, but at 5V it will enumerate and negotiate for more power). Then the device says what voltages it can handle. and the port increases the voltage to the maximum available in that range.
This way dumb 5V chargers are still good, and hosts with only 5V available can continue to operate more-or-less as they do now, but hosts with higher rails available can deliver more power and/or deliver the same power more efficiently, but any devices that don't ask for more voltage still get the safe 5V. (And 5V being 3A means current devices that want 2A or 2.1A won't need special handling, while new ~10W devices will (hopefully) work from either 5V or 10/12/20/whatever.)
Of course, some morons will inevitably release non-compliant high-voltage dumb chargers, but those already exist -- e.g. my Transformer tablet charges slowly at 5V or fast at 15V (over the same pins in the dock connector), so obviously it ships with one dock-connector/USB-A cable for both transferring data to a computer and charging, and a 15V wall wart with a USB-A female socket. At least if the standard specifies negotiation, there will be an option to make a smart, enumerating & negotiating high-voltage USB charger... (not that I really believe this will happen, any more than the standards-correct (pre-USB-IF BCS) smart USB chargers that would negotiate up to 500mA ever did.)
(Score: 1) by urza9814 on Thursday April 03 2014, @08:32PM
Isn't that basically how Firewire worked? IIRC, that was rated for up to 30V...I remember charging an old (3rd gen) iPod by directly wiring a 9V battery into the firewire plug, with no protection at all. Worked great, every time.
(Score: 2) by Foobar Bazbot on Friday April 04 2014, @03:23AM
Well, firewire didn't have negotiations for voltage, it just had a very wide range of voltages, so every peripheral device had to accept any voltage in that range. This is exactly the scenario GP was concerned about, because of the many existing USB devices that don't accept a wide range of input voltage.
(Score: 2, Funny) by jcross on Thursday April 03 2014, @01:44PM
Yep, looks like a mistake in the FA as well. Voltage doesn't measure either a rate or power, so that can't be right. Also 100W seems like an awful lot! Can anyone think of an application for that? USB hair driers? Charging your phone so fast it catches on fire?
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Thursday April 03 2014, @04:15PM
I'm seeing an attempt to reduce cable clutter, and maybe enabling devices such as a RAID cages with only one or two connections back to the tower (as opposed to a mess of power adapters on the outlet strip). We won't really know what interesting applications come out until the connector becomes widespread, but having options for device manufacturers can only be a good thing.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 1) by Aiwendil on Thursday April 03 2014, @06:31PM
It's obvious, it is so you can charge the laptop via usb from the laptop itself and thereby solving all the pesky battery-problems... ;)
But more seriously - Monitor 20-40w, speakers 10-30w, usb-drives 5-10w each. and suddenly you have hit the 100w limit (and that is before counting the draw of charging devices). This is of course only to solve the cable-clutter.
Or for the DIY-crowd - running a 3d-printer from a single (powered) usb-hub.
(Score: 1) by jcross on Thursday April 03 2014, @06:41PM
Right on. I was thinking it would be a per-device limit and hadn't considered that you might want to run a bunch of stuff from a single hub. And jokes aside, if you could also power your laptop from the same kind of standardized connector (just with no data pins wired), that would actually be really convenient because you'd only need one kind of power supply.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday April 03 2014, @07:05PM
IIRC, it is supposed to always default to 5V and only provide more if the attached device negotiates for it.
(Score: 1) by scruffybeard on Thursday April 03 2014, @12:51PM
What if the user tries to insert the plug vertically? We need to account to all levels of silliness.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Rivenaleem on Thursday April 03 2014, @01:43PM
Yeah, it should be circular, like most laptop chargers, and headphones.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Tork on Thursday April 03 2014, @06:49PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1) by scruffybeard on Thursday April 03 2014, @07:31PM
I have a portable DVD player with a second screen that connects via 4-conductor 3.5mm headphone plug (and a second cable for power). Like you I wonder if that could be used for USB, or Ethernet, over short distances.
(Score: 1) by theluggage on Thursday April 03 2014, @04:36PM
Perhaps they should fill it with explodium (you know, the stuff that they put in the control panels in Star Trek) so that it blows up in a shower of sparks if you get it wrong. That would teach people not to learn which way up USB plugs go.
People who try to plug in micro-USB in the dark, or with poor eyesight, or around the back of a device should be punished. Only infallible super-humans should be allowed to use tech.
...or, maybe, designers should just make things nicer for everybody to use...?
(Score: 1) by boris on Thursday April 03 2014, @01:35PM
Lets hope the new design is a little more resilient to every day use. My connectors seem to start failing after 3 months of use. I try all the tricks to extend their life, but in the end I end up buying another one.
(Score: 1) by Soluzar on Thursday April 03 2014, @01:44PM
Working as intended. :P
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday April 03 2014, @07:16PM
That's a problem of manufacturing quality. I plug/unplug my phone several times a day for several years now and it still connnects securely enough to pick up the phone by the cable.
(Score: 3, Funny) by egcagrac0 on Thursday April 03 2014, @02:01PM
"OK, I need you to unplug the cable, turn it upside down, and plug it back in again."
This will be the new "have you tried turning it off and on again?"
(Score: 2) by tibman on Thursday April 03 2014, @05:17PM
The flimsy bit that breaks is STILL inside the host device and not the cable. This was a good opportunity to fix that. I mean, it breaks compatibility anyways, might as well go all out.
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(Score: 1) by iroll on Thursday April 03 2014, @10:20PM
Magsafe and Thunderbolt are two of the best connecters in consumer electronics, and we're boned because nobody is going to pay for the outrageous license fees from Apple (assuming they would license them).
Every time I look at yet another USB permutation I am stunned at how they manage to find a way to make it even more obnoxiously intricate, so the cheap electronics that inevitably use them just feel even cheaper when they disintegrate in your hand.
(Score: 1) by eepunk on Friday April 04 2014, @12:29AM
https://xkcd.com/927/ [xkcd.com]