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Some devices have greater power demands than others. So there are two design choices that can be made: (1) require all chargers and cables to support charging a
by rlpb 6y ago
Some devices have greater power demands than others. So there are two design choices that can be made: (1) require all chargers and cables to support charging all devices; or (2) allow "lesser" chargers and cables.
Choosing (1) would have meant that everything would work as you expect, but then even the cheapest devices would have to come with an unnecessarily beefy (and therefore expensive) chargers.
Choosing (2) results in potential for the situation that you described. Lesser chargers and cables cannot charge more demanding devices.
I'm pretty sure (1) would simply have not been practical. It would have been wasteful and the expense would kill adoption. So they went with (2).
Seems reasonable to me.
- SuperPaintMan 6y agoA better solution is to just have a different physical connector so it's obvious at a glance if you have the correct cables. But that: involves carrying another cable, and kind of defeats the purpose of a unifying connector.
- rlpb 6y agoI've bought stuff that supports everything I own, and so I don't have to carry multiple cables or chargers. Different physical connectors would be a step backwards for me.
- angus-prune 6y agoThe key missing choice is (3) Make it possible to tell the difference between the cables/devices. Thats what everyone is complaining about, that there is no way to know without trial and error what combination of capabilities across (at a minimum) three different elements you're dealing with. Make it so that we can tell the difference! As per teh articel, they tried to do this with the thunderbolt standard on top of USB-C with a lighting bolt symbol, but even that doesn't mean you know what you're getting in practice. USB3 for instance mandated blue plastic for connectors, so you could tell the difference from previous generations.