you always have to manage a million different cables for each one, and they all suck. why can’t we just use AAA batteries instead of these shitty lithium ones? it’s so fucking frustrating. where can I find gadgets that work while plugged in, or at least don’t need to be recharged every two fucking days?
The “USB C” charger laws in the EU should help with this. As should the “right to repair” laws that are emerging.
Consider all the dinky appliances that end up in the garbage when their non-replaceable battery fails (like electric toothbrushes and razors). This is specially bad when the manufacturer chooses to use a lithium ion battery. Great way to start a fire in the garbage truck.
USB-C makes things kinda worse, in a way.
In the past you could slap together an adapter by chopping up some old cable and slapping it to a new power supply. And things would work, even if voltage or power ratings didn’t match exactly, or even at all (although, things would usually work much worse then).
I’ve jury rigged an adapter for my laptop, which uses a 65w, 20v power brick, to run off a 45w, 16v one, when mine died and I needed to access the files. It worked, as long as I wasn’t using doing anything too computationally intensive on the thing.
If the laptops used USB-C, that is very likely would not have worked at all. Chances are, the manufacturer of the smaller laptop would’ve bundled the cheapest power brick that covers the needs of the machine, so it would’ve most likely been 45w, 15v over power delivery. And mine would’ve been 65w, 20v over power delivery. And since everything in USB-C world has to talk to each other and agree beforehand, chances are, nothing would even try to work, even if it, realistically, can.
Uh no. USB C means you can grab a duck head or cable from any other USB C device and plug it in without having to worry about the correct connector or voltage. It’s part of the design, and it’s why the EU mandates all cell phones switch to it. Some duck heads may charge more slowly than others, but it should still work.
USB-C is an interface that can be used for a variety of different things. There are different “levels” of power delivery, there’s thunderbolt, there’s DisplayPort-over-USB-C, etc. And for things to work, the devices on both ends of the cable and the cable itself must comply with any given standard.
For example, on some laptops you can’t use a USB-C port with thunderbolt for charging the device, nor the port that supports power delivery to connect thunderbolt devices. While using the same physical interface, the ports are not interchangeable. Even if you’re connecting everything right, nothing is going to work if the cable you’re using isn’t specced properly (and trying to figure out the spec of a cable you have, considering they rarely have any labeling, is, definitely, fun).
If anything, USB-C makes everything harder and more convoluted, because instead of using different ports and plugs for different standards, it’s now one port for nigh everything under the sun. If you want things to work, nowadays, you have to hunt down cable and port specs to ensure everything is mutually compatible.
No one is using DisplayPort with an electric toothbrush. You’re confusing the issues solved by the EU legislation.
Even looking at power delivery alone, there’s still different voltages and wattage, as well as cable specs. Nothing really changes. You still end up having different cables for different devices, essentially.
I haven’t run into a USB-PD charger that doesn’t fall back to 5V/2A if it can’t negotiate power delivery. As long as you buy a 45/65/100W PD brick and a supporting cable (both are cheap and getting cheaper) you don’t really have to worry about what you might be charging.
Even 20-25W phone chargers and cables will generally slow-charge most laptops in a pinch.
Charging my laptop with my powerbank I have for my phone is a moment of glory.
Sad thing is, it’s not entirely true: I have a baby night light that charges with usb-c. But only if you have some old usb-a brick on the other side of the cable. Nut a single usb-c to usb-c cable and charger combination I tried worked neither does the charger ofy ThinkPad work.
Another thing I hate is that those usb-c phone ports always suck up lint, and at some point refuse to work. Which makes cleaning needed and might break your charging port.
And yeah, I still think it’s the best option available.
Did you try flipping the cable over? Some of the ports or cables that use USB C are super cheaply made and get rid of the flippability.
Which is part of the problem…
On the one hand , I did not try it just once, so just by accident this would have happend. But yes I too tried it deliberately.