Well, in the first place the EU isn't really known for its speed, let's remember that they spent over a decade on this proposal and initially they wanted to settle on Micro USB as the standard charging port, they might waste several years before approving a replacement; in second lieu the very fact that the EU has to approve a new charging port standard, before devices using it can be sold in the EU, could convince many companies that they can live with Type C until the end of the days.
On the point that this legislation applies to more than phones, those other devices aren't nearly as ubiquitous in Europe as smartphones and personally I think that it wasn't necessary to regulate them, but the EU wants to regulate even your
cucumbers, so one can easily understand that they couldn't help themselves. But while cucumbers remain pretty much the same over the decades, charging ports for electronic devices might very well need to change.
Micro USB was already decided on yes, but they left it up to the device makers and they clearly decided to move something else, as micro USB wasn't suitable for modern needs. The EU said that even USB-C isn't expected to last forever and that they expect something else to replace it in the future.
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.
So, going forward, we'll have one type of charger and cable for most devices? Sounds good to me. I also think it's a plus that they won't come bundled with chargers and cables. How many bins and drawers are out there in homes worldwide full of several types of chargers and cables?
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...
What I really hate about USB-C is that there are too many type of cables. Those should be strictly regulated in order to remove all the confusion between charging only cables, cables with 25W, 60W, 100W power charging, some with only USB 2.0 transfer speed, other 10Gbps, other 20, other none.... like...WTF dude!?!
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.
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.
It slides in way more smooth & another big selling point is that if you manage to break it, the cable breaks & not the port on your phone.
