What’s fallacious with USB standards

USB is a giant lie. The U in USB stands for universal, but with confusing naming schemes, inconsistent port colours, and ranging power delivery capabilities, just saying something is USB seems as universal as speaking Esperanto. And essentially the most annoying thing is that it doesn’t must be this fashion.

Take, for instance, the port color issue we just mentioned. For some time, all the pieces was relatively easy. The OG version of USB 1.1 had white ports. The faster USB 2.0 used the colour black. And once version 3.0 got here out, these ports tended to be blue. It wasn’t too hard to recollect, especially since numerous time had passed between the three original versions.

But it surely didn’t take long for things to get complicated. We got the turquoise one for 10 gigabits per second USB 3.1. And red for 20 gigabit USB 3.2. There are also colours that usually indicate that the port supports fast charging or stays on when the remainder of the system is turned off for charging. These are frequently warmer colours comparable to yellow, orange or red. In order that red port in your computer may not actually be 20 gigabits fast.

Then you might have other colours that indicate support for some type of proprietary fast charging, comparable to purple for Huawei or green for Qualcomm. Now you might have to recollect again what color means what USB version, because all the pieces that is just not USB 2.0 or older has been renamed to USB 3.2.

The thing is, there is not really any standardization regarding USB port colours. These are all just conventions that different hardware manufacturers may or may not follow. I mean, some corporations just do whatever they like for the sake of aesthetics, as you may see if you happen to’ve ever bought anything from a razor.

But even if you happen to’ve never given much thought to the colour of a USB connector, you’ll be able to’t completely ignore its shape. We now have the reversible USB-C connector, which has really gained popularity, but we’re still a great distance from completely replacing the old rectangular USB-A connector. There remains to be numerous confusion around USB-C, and a well-liked misconception is that USB-C ports at all times support the identical features or are at all times faster.

This is unquestionably not the case. Many USB-C ports only support the older five gigabit specification. Worse yet, for those attempting to determine what USB-C products to purchase, there are quite a couple of low cost, incompatible USB-C cables that may actually damage your gadgets.

And the really sad thing is that even considering all of the things you might have to look at out for with USB-C, it’s probably still a greater solution than the hodgepodge of other USB connector variants we have had prior to now, including mini, micro, and this cool looking device that got here out literally just had so as to add more pins to support USB 3.0 speeds. We have not even gotten to an important thing that almost all of us use via USB as of late, which is charging. For now, we indicate that there’s a huge variety within the speed at which a phone or laptop could be charged through a port. The USB power standard helps a bit, but there are still some variations. Not all client devices can fully use it yet.

But there may be excellent news on the horizon. As confusing as USB has been, the brand new USB-4 standard may make things easier within the near future. It must use USB-C and support a high-speed connection of 20 or 40 gigabits per second. And yes, there may be an or option, but combined with the increasing variety of devices that support USB power, I hope that USB will soon turn into more universal.

But within the meantime, make sure to read reviews or specifications of the gadgets you are excited about and discover exactly what they will do before you purchase. Otherwise I’d have wasted all this time whining.