Tuesday, June 7th 2022
USB Type-C to Become Mandatory Charging Port in the European Union
Lawmakers in the European Union have formally agreed to make USB Type-C the standard charging port in the union and although there are still a couple of minor hurdles ahead of it becoming a legal requirement, it's expected to be a requirement by the autumn of 2024. For it to become EU wide legislation, the EU parliament and Council still needs to approve the new law, but considering all sides seem to have largely agreed on the details, this is said to be largely formality at this point. However, the new law isn't just about making USB-C the standard used for charging mobile phones, tablets and other types of portable electronics, including laptops, but it also covers chargers and this is where things get a bit tricky.
The EU is legislating for what it calls a "harmonised fast-charging technology", which means that proprietary fast charging technologies might be out. The USB Power Delivery standard already supports fast charging, but it's still limited compared to some of the proprietary charging standards that are coming out of China, where some companies offer a full charge in 15 minutes. This may in itself not be that big of a deal, as all of these standards still use USB-C connectors and can rely on USB PD as a fallback charging method, but the EU also wants to unbundle chargers from devices. This means that any device that requires a proprietary charger to reach its optimal charging performance, will require consumers to buy a charger that used to come bundled with said device. This might not be a major hassle, but it's still an inconvenience in those cases and it's likely this will lead to higher prices for some products as well.
The new rules will have a 24 month grace period for all devices, except laptops, which will be given a 40 month grace period. There's a simple reason for this, the EU is expecting laptops to use USB PD 3.1, which allow for 100 to 240 W power adapters, which is more in line with what higher-end laptops are using. Many laptops that lack a discrete graphics chip, or have a lower-end discrete graphics chip already rely on USB PD 3.0 for charging and the recently launched MacBook Air only ships with a 35 W adapter as an example. Most thin and light notebooks rely on a 65 W adapter, but there are also desktop replacement laptops that use 300 W plus adapters, so it'll be interesting to see how the notebook manufacturers deal with such devices down the road.
Sources:
The European Parliament, via the Verge
The EU is legislating for what it calls a "harmonised fast-charging technology", which means that proprietary fast charging technologies might be out. The USB Power Delivery standard already supports fast charging, but it's still limited compared to some of the proprietary charging standards that are coming out of China, where some companies offer a full charge in 15 minutes. This may in itself not be that big of a deal, as all of these standards still use USB-C connectors and can rely on USB PD as a fallback charging method, but the EU also wants to unbundle chargers from devices. This means that any device that requires a proprietary charger to reach its optimal charging performance, will require consumers to buy a charger that used to come bundled with said device. This might not be a major hassle, but it's still an inconvenience in those cases and it's likely this will lead to higher prices for some products as well.
54 Comments on USB Type-C to Become Mandatory Charging Port in the European Union
USB-C is also designed to wear on the cable and not the port, it doesn't solve the "breaking device tab" but when things break things break, a lightning port can also get damaged and like i said they didn't put a reliability number.
For laptops...not so much. power barrels are usually a stand alone connector that is screwed into the case, and can be easily replaced. USB C ports, OTOH, are a royal PITA to replace and often are impossible unless you are Louis Rossman tier. Any my experience in IT, between heavy thick dock cables that resist curving, connectors having pressure put on them from the laptop being a different height then the wire or the wire being pushed by a book, ece; and general usage, these type C ports do NOT hold up well to repeated strain. They get loose within 6 months, and after 3 years we are seeing a swarm of motherboards with bad USB C connectors that necessitate a (expensive) motherboard replacement.If that IS part of the design, the stacks of laptops on my desk waiting on new motherboards would say otherwise. They royally failed.
That said I think the EU are silly and pointless bureaucrats who will do absolutely zero good with this regulation. Seriously, it will help literally no-one.
They should remove all this garbage and just allow min specs such as 100W with 40Gbps and be done with it, instead of the current cable mess out there.
PD 3.0 and 3.1 are as solid standards as we can expect, even though they're not perfect, but it's at least a royalty free standard that any company can use. Prior to USB PD, charging was a wild west where anything went and that would've made implementing the charger side of the a common standard impossible.Cables can still be bundled from what I understand.
Most of my old cables are just that, old, because very few things I have use those cables now.
I should really tidy up and get rid of some of them, as they'll most likely never be used again.
That said, I don't have nearly as many cables as I once used to have, external SCSI, internal SCSI, IDE, printer cables, serial cables, VGA cables, DVI cables, proprietary video in and out cables and what not...Have you actually compared the cables?
There's a reason why so many cables are only USB 2.0 for the data, as when you hit the 100 W capable cables, you have some really thick wire strands inside the cables and it makes the cables very stiff and almost rigid. They also cost 2-3x as much as a USB 2.0 cable that can still deliver 100 W of power.
There are no 25 or 60 W cables, the next step down is 65 W and anything below that doesn't require an e-marker chip, so they're not "regulated" at all, since they fall outside of the standards that exists.
As for data transfer, well, it has something to do with an ever evolving ecosystem, hence why you can buy different cables for different speeds. That said, there shouldn't really be a difference between 10 and 20 Gbps cables, since you're using one or two pairs of the same wires, but apparently there still is...
If you buy USB4 40 Gbps certified cables, you'll solve your problem. There aren't many of those available as yet though.
If it wasn't clear, this is just something being thrown around and not an actual thing coming from Apple.
Then again, wireless only phones have already been proposed.
I do miss the 3.5 mm on my previous phone, as now I have to use a stupid dongle with a DAC in it to be able to use my headphones with my phone, which works, but it's really an inconvenience and an extra cost.
Bridging the analog and digital domain still requires electronics and I'd rather have those built into the phone.
And this absolute wireless phone thing has opened me a lot of questions more than being repulsed by the idea, apart of how you do it, in case it's possible with some form of beamforming to the AC outlet or something, how you manage to avoid frying brains? How that affects other nearby electronic components? What kind of enviromental hazards can this possibility cause?
If someone says a big tech company will do it and there have been proposals, sure these questions have been made before. I think it's funny how sometimes we try to hollywoodize the reality, but if they have answers for that, I'm curious.
That said, as you can see, 60 W is the baseline for all USB4 cables.