Edit: see comments for clarifications.
I am probably late on this one, but god damn this is one nasty trick by Philips.
Context; I recently decided to upgrade my shaver, from a Philips One Blade to Philips an all-in-one-trimmer-7000. As you can see on the pictures below, they changed the charger for the adapter by maybe 1–2 millimetres, just so the old charger could not be used by the old charger. Now, this normally isn’t a big deal, but with the new trimmer, the charger is USB-A only. Where’s the previous one had the plug on it instead. To me this is mildly infuriating as I know need to get an extra adapter just to charge my shaver in the bathroom. They had the exact same design for the chargers, yet changed it just slightly so they wouldn’t be able to be reused? Why… Philips… why?
Edit: many good points in the comments! I don’t know how to manually check the voltage, but seems like folks figured it out in the comments too. Should have just been USB-C!
Here’s my only issue with making everything in the world USB-C…
Different cables have different functions or even are able to handle different voltages and amperage and right now, it’s not clear what cable holds what functionality.
If there were some sort of international color code standard or something, it would be perfect. As of now, I have to keep track of what cable goes with what device.
Every cable should be rated minimum 5V 3A, have functional CC, power and data(Dp, Dn) pins as Type C spec requires. Which means it should also be capable of USB PD(still doesn’t need data pins).
AFAIK every in-spec cable should be able to carry 20V 3A.
Problem is not bad standard, problem is non-compliant cables.
If all your devices are USB-C PD rated then you only need to have cables and wall adapters for your highest rated device as all others will only demand what they can tolerate when the handshake happens after plugging in the cable. The only exception would be devuces that don’t follow the spec but use the plug for cost saving reasons which is a completely seperate issue.
I’m with you. Our phones, the laptop, the Switch, even my vape pen, all use USB C, but most of the cables we have only work on half the devices. Kind of defeats the purpose of being “universal”.