Author Topic: The EU is enforcing USB-C on portable devices  (Read 66739 times)

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Offline Black Phoenix

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Re: The EU is enforcing USB-C on portable devices
« Reply #450 on: October 27, 2022, 12:48:45 am »
USB-C on iPhone won't ever happen. Print this out and take it to the bank, cash it when I'm shown to be right. I know Apple inside out.

Damn. Looks like that's gone the way of the rest of the economy too.

Aged like milk...
 
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Offline onsenwombat

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Re: The EU is enforcing USB-C on portable devices
« Reply #451 on: October 28, 2022, 09:00:32 am »
Probably said already, but just continue as with the lightning cables and have a chip there, but with enhanced features. Non-genuine cable detected -> piss poor charging speed for you, Sir/Ma'am.
 

Online Berni

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Re: The EU is enforcing USB-C on portable devices
« Reply #452 on: October 28, 2022, 09:55:23 am »
Lets just hope they also do the sensible thing and also support USB-PD for charging, rather than invent yet another proprietary power negotiation protocol that will only fast charge apple devices.
 

Offline Ranayna

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Re: The EU is enforcing USB-C on portable devices
« Reply #453 on: October 28, 2022, 10:10:17 am »
Lets just hope they also do the sensible thing and also support USB-PD for charging, rather than invent yet another proprietary power negotiation protocol that will only fast charge apple devices.
Isn't USB-PD part of the requirements? I think the rules say something about USB-PD required when you exceed a certain charging power.

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20220930IPR41928/long-awaited-common-charger-for-mobile-devices-will-be-a-reality-in-2024
At least the press release heavily implies that, since it talks about interchangable USB Power Supplies.
 

Offline Karel

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Re: The EU is enforcing USB-C on portable devices
« Reply #454 on: October 28, 2022, 10:43:01 am »
Could be very well that apple will comply by leaving the lightning connector but removing the possibility to use it for charging.
Instead they'll implement wireless charging using their proprietary protocol.
 

Offline tom66

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Re: The EU is enforcing USB-C on portable devices
« Reply #455 on: October 28, 2022, 11:11:16 am »
I don't see Apple doing a wireless only iPhone, they would be massively behind the competition in charging speed.  A modern smartphone can do 25-30W charging now (how good that is for the battery is debateable I guess) whereas Lightning was already behind at 14W, and Apple's wireless charging is limited to 15W.
 

Offline Ranayna

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Re: The EU is enforcing USB-C on portable devices
« Reply #456 on: October 28, 2022, 11:30:36 am »
For me personally, charging speed would not be the issue. I tend to avoid quick charging anyway, since the added heat might have influence on the lifetime of the battery. As long as it is from empty to full over night i'm fine with slow charging speeds. Though faster charging on demand would be a nice feature.

What i could not live without though, is the option of getting my photos off the phone without using the internet. Plug in the cable, allow access, and you can easily pull everything off. The direct connection is also essential to recover the phone via iTunes, so it is reassuring to have that option. And yes, i had bricked iPhones that i did need to recover.
Of course it might be possible to do local wireless connectivity with the fast charge pad, but i think that would be slow.
 

Online Berni

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Re: The EU is enforcing USB-C on portable devices
« Reply #457 on: October 28, 2022, 12:17:17 pm »
I have not went trough the details of this EU law, but as far as the USB-C specification goes the USB-PD support is an optional feature.

So a USB-C host may chose to not provide USB-PD functionality and simply provide a fixed 5V 1.5A on the port. At the same time a USB-C device may choose to just use the 5V available from the start and draw less than 1.5A. So you only need to use USB-PD if you want more power. This means if the EU law made USB-PD support mandatory, that would sort of go against the official USB-C specification.

All USB-C cables are supposed to be rated for a minimum of 3A so they might use that as there limit. There are also 5A cables that have to identify themselves with a chip.... that hopefully Apple won't get the idea to make a special one. No idea if messing with this violates the USB-C spec or the new EU law.

If the law was written in a smart way it would mandate USB-PD support for devices that consume between 7.5 to 100W. But there is no way the legal pencil pushers there would do this much research into the laws they are putting together.
 

Offline Karel

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Re: The EU is enforcing USB-C on portable devices
« Reply #458 on: October 28, 2022, 12:30:05 pm »
If a charger port is available on the device, it MUST be a USB Type-C charging receptacle combined with the USB Power Delivery charging communication protocol.

https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-10713-2022-INIT/x/pdf   page 28
 
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Online Berni

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Re: The EU is enforcing USB-C on portable devices
« Reply #459 on: October 28, 2022, 12:57:42 pm »
Quote
3. In so far as they are capable of being recharged via wired charging at voltages higher
than 5 volts, currents higher than 3 amperes or powers higher than 15 watts, the
categories or classes of radio equipment referred to in point 1 letters a) to m) shall:

(a) incorporate the USB Power Delivery, as described in the standard EN IEC 62680-1-
2:2021 ‘Universal serial bus interfaces for data and power - Part 1-2: Common
components - USB Power Delivery specification’;

(b) ensure that any additional charging protocol allows the full functionality of the USB
Power Delivery referred to in point (a), irrespective of the charging device used

Yep it looks like you have to have USB-PD if you draw more than 15W, so that is well done. You are still allowed to have extra proprietary high power modes, but they still have to retain compatibility with USB-PD.


The slightly worrying thing is that this would require all laptops under 100W to use USB-C for charging (Okay those are ultralights anyway). However it also says that once 240W USB-PD becomes mature the law should be bumped up to there. This would now include the big chonky gaming/workstration laptops. Not sure if it is a good idea to have those sort of powers running trough the tiny connectors continuously (especially as these laptops get really hot too) while requiring the motherboards power input circuitry to handle 240W from a input voltage range of 5V to 48V. These boatanchor laptops could not change up any usable amount from anything less than 30W
 

Offline tom66

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Re: The EU is enforcing USB-C on portable devices
« Reply #460 on: October 28, 2022, 01:09:21 pm »
AFAIK it's permitted under USB-PD to support only a limited voltage range.

You could have a laptop that refuses to charge from a 5V source -- I've tried it with my Lenovo laptop and it doesn't even bother lighting up the charging LED.

I do question 240W through a Type C connector though.  My work laptop has a 300W brick, and it's a low end gaming laptop (not used for gaming: just happens to be rather good for FPGA work, too, with an 8-core Ryzen CPU.)  So presumably one workaround would be to simply require a 300W+ adapter to be supported some other way.
 

Offline Ranayna

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Re: The EU is enforcing USB-C on portable devices
« Reply #461 on: October 28, 2022, 01:22:33 pm »
Well, the EU might want to limit the maximum power of computers anyway, like they did for example with vacuum cleaners.

So, in the eyes of the EU, it might be a good thing that USB-PD can only go up to 240 Watts (for now).
 

Offline tooki

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Re: The EU is enforcing USB-C on portable devices
« Reply #462 on: October 28, 2022, 01:49:08 pm »
Lets just hope they also do the sensible thing and also support USB-PD for charging, rather than invent yet another proprietary power negotiation protocol that will only fast charge apple devices.
Apple only came up with its proprietary charger identification back when the USB standards didn’t have any charger signaling whatsoever. This affected everyone: since the USB standard didn’t have charger identification at the time, everyone came up with their own thing. Not just Apple. Once the USB standards included charger identification (USB BC, in 2010), Apple made its devices compatible with that. All of Apple’s USB-C products* use bog-standard USB PD.

In other words: you’re whining about something that ceased being a thing over 10 years ago.


*With one exception: the 12” MacBook. It uses a weird voltage. But it’s not because Apple was dumb: USB-PD was not finalized at that point, and Apple followed the preliminary standard. Unfortunately, after Apple released it, the final PD standard changed the voltages, no longer including the one Apple was using. In other words: ALL Apple USB-C devices follow the latest PD standard at the time of release.
 

Offline Karel

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Re: The EU is enforcing USB-C on portable devices
« Reply #463 on: October 28, 2022, 02:06:46 pm »
In other words: ALL Apple USB-C devices follow the latest PD standard at the time of release.

I guess the problem is related to Apple devices that don't have USB-C... 8)
 

Offline eti

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Re: The EU is enforcing USB-C on portable devices
« Reply #464 on: October 28, 2022, 02:16:23 pm »
USB-C on iPhone won't ever happen. Print this out and take it to the bank, cash it when I'm shown to be right. I know Apple inside out.

Damn. Looks like that's gone the way of the rest of the economy too.

Aged like milk...

Which sours and turns into cheese which can then sit on a shell for many years, maturing and developing flavour
 

Offline tom66

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Re: The EU is enforcing USB-C on portable devices
« Reply #465 on: October 28, 2022, 02:32:44 pm »
Which sours and turns into cheese which can then sit on a shell for many years, maturing and developing flavour

Err, you don't make cheese by just letting milk go off.  Cue Mitchell and Webb (British comedy TV series):
 

Offline tooki

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Re: The EU is enforcing USB-C on portable devices
« Reply #466 on: October 29, 2022, 10:30:51 am »
In other words: ALL Apple USB-C devices follow the latest PD standard at the time of release.

I guess the problem is related to Apple devices that don't have USB-C... 8)
And you clearly either didn’t read, or didn’t understand, everything that I said before that.

Any Apple device released after USB BC came out support USB BC. (They also support the old Apple identification, so they can charge from existing Apple chargers, too).

You have to go back to really early devices to find one that absolutely requires an original charger. Again, not an “Apple problem”, but one of ANY device from that era.

You really need to drop it, because you either don’t know the reality of the situation, or are willfully ignoring it to try and make a point not supported by fact.
« Last Edit: October 29, 2022, 10:32:46 am by tooki »
 

Offline Karel

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Re: The EU is enforcing USB-C on portable devices
« Reply #467 on: October 29, 2022, 10:53:29 am »
You really need to drop it, because you either don’t know the reality of the situation, or are willfully ignoring it to try and make a point not supported by fact.

Where is the USB-C connector on an Iphone?
 

Offline tooki

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Re: The EU is enforcing USB-C on portable devices
« Reply #468 on: October 29, 2022, 11:20:59 am »
You really need to drop it, because you either don’t know the reality of the situation, or are willfully ignoring it to try and make a point not supported by fact.

Where is the USB-C connector on an Iphone?
On the other end of the Lightning cable, for now. ;)
 

Offline Marco

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Re: The EU is enforcing USB-C on portable devices
« Reply #469 on: October 29, 2022, 02:13:40 pm »
I don't support the EU in this, but I enjoy it because of the Apple fans who use might makes right as a moral argument for the way Apple runs the app store.

Meet the big boss and bend over.
 

Offline PlainName

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Re: The EU is enforcing USB-C on portable devices
« Reply #470 on: October 29, 2022, 06:07:31 pm »
Quote
I don't support the EU in this

Why not?
 

Offline Marco

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Re: The EU is enforcing USB-C on portable devices
« Reply #471 on: October 29, 2022, 06:54:26 pm »
In the big scheme of things the impact on e-waste is virtually non existent, it won't create significantly more competition either because charger cables are the least of what is causing Apple ecosystem lock in and competitive advantage.
 

Offline PlainName

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Re: The EU is enforcing USB-C on portable devices
« Reply #472 on: October 29, 2022, 07:13:29 pm »
Sure, the e-waste thing is pretty silly. But haven't you benefited from not trying to find that particular PSU for some kit you haven't used for 3 months? Things don't come with PSUs you have to find a home for (and they never stack on the shelf as well as the kit they power), you can't plug the wrong one in and blow up something, etc.

Personally, I really appreciate being able to just grab some random spare cable and plug whatever it is into the 6-port USB supply. No captive cables to try and fix when they wear or just break because. If that means pretending it's all about e-waste, I'm happy to pretend :)
 
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Online SiliconWizard

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Re: The EU is enforcing USB-C on portable devices
« Reply #473 on: October 30, 2022, 08:06:07 pm »
There will never be a good outcome from fricking technocratic government (and even less so from supranational entities) meddling in any topic other than obvious safety issues.
History is full of this shit and it never ends well. But we don't learn, so we just rinse and repeat.

If you don't like Apple products (or any other brand) for whatever reason, just don't buy them. Do you need mommy EU to help you?

And, it's not even clear that it helps anything at all. Actually, I wouldn't be hugely surprised if the overall environmental cost of elaborating and having all companies follow all those directives and standards to the letter was a lot higher than just letting them sell whatever they want as long as it's safe. Just a thought.
 

Offline Marco

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Re: The EU is enforcing USB-C on portable devices
« Reply #474 on: October 30, 2022, 08:59:30 pm »
Do you need mommy EU to help you?

Only when the market is for whatever reason incapable of maintaining a competitive environment.

Consumer electronic ecosystem is an industry with the highest barriers to entry in human history. Only getting worse as more gets pulled into ecosystem integration and as Apple starts competing as first party in more markets, say cars, where due to Apple tax they have a built in competitive advantage. I just don't think this in particular is helping.
 


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