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Would it be possible for our existing USB-C interfaces (software and hardware) to provide more information to the user? I mean, could the UI tell us: (1) Your

Would it be possible for our existing USB-C interfaces (software and hardware) to provide more information to the user? I mean, could the UI tell us: (1) Your external device is <whatever class of device> and it requests power at 12V, minimum 15W, up to 40W, and it requests data at up to 100Mbps down/5Mbps up (2) Your cable promises to accept power at up to 25W, and data at up to 40Mbps bidirectional (3) I can offer power up to 60W, and data up to 500M/100M And, this is what we have negotiated (and what appears to be working): Data: 40M/5Mbps and Power: 12V/25W from host * * Is that feasible? It would be nice. I don't agree USB-C is a 'total mess' (the physical interface is quite good), but it is a sad disappointment. I hope it will get better.

megous 6y ago
Yes, it is possible.
dafoex 6y ago
And for manufacturers to accurately label what their devices can do, so there's no surprises when you read one thing only to find out its false and you can't get HDMI out of your phone
- FatalLogic 6y ago
  That would also be good. The possibility that a USB-C device might support some extended standard, for video or high bandwidth or high power and so on, has been abused for marketing purposes, and now this is damaging the public perception of USB-C There would still be surprises when you plug in the wrong kind of cable, unfortunately, even if the device is honestly described
Tepix 6y ago
It would be nice. But just trying to buy a DisplayPort 1.4 cable tells you that companies selling cables would rather sell you a "4K" DP cable instead of referring to the standard, leaving you non the wiser.
Kirby64 6y ago
The power portion is already handled by USB-PD protocol. Part of the negotiation protocol is telling each side "what they can offer" and "what they accept" and picking the highest one that matches both sides. It often isn't displayed in software because I'm not sure there's a way (or at least a unified way) to display that back to a host processor. Data doesn't make sense since USB2 is USB2, there's no context on how 'fast' it is (besides USB high speed vs. standard speed). USB3/Thunderbolt/etc is more complicated, but that's also a tricky behavior. In principle, I agree that it would be nice if there was a unified software that could tell you what is negotiated and what an upstream device is 'looking for'. I imagine we might eventually get there... maybe... kinda depends on hardware vendors to enable that though.

megous 6y ago

Yes, it is possible.

dafoex 6y ago

And for manufacturers to accurately label what their devices can do, so there's no surprises when you read one thing only to find out its false and you can't get HDMI out of your phone

FatalLogic 6y ago
That would also be good. The possibility that a USB-C device might support some extended standard, for video or high bandwidth or high power and so on, has been abused for marketing purposes, and now this is damaging the public perception of USB-C There would still be surprises when you plug in the wrong kind of cable, unfortunately, even if the device is honestly described

Tepix 6y ago

It would be nice. But just trying to buy a DisplayPort 1.4 cable tells you that companies selling cables would rather sell you a "4K" DP cable instead of referring to the standard, leaving you non the wiser.

Kirby64 6y ago

The power portion is already handled by USB-PD protocol. Part of the negotiation protocol is telling each side "what they can offer" and "what they accept" and picking the highest one that matches both sides. It often isn't displayed in software because I'm not sure there's a way (or at least a unified way) to display that back to a host processor. Data doesn't make sense since USB2 is USB2, there's no context on how 'fast' it is (besides USB high speed vs. standard speed). USB3/Thunderbolt/etc is more complicated, but that's also a tricky behavior. In principle, I agree that it would be nice if there was a unified software that could tell you what is negotiated and what an upstream device is 'looking for'. I imagine we might eventually get there... maybe... kinda depends on hardware vendors to enable that though.