The design of USB Type-C has been finalized by the USB 3.0 Implementers Forum (USB-IF) [PDF], after having completed the USB 3.1 specifications back in August 2013. Foxconn has released renderings (photo above) of the new design earlier in April, but it is nice to finally see the design and specifications for Type-C finalized and ready for mass production.
This new Type-C USB 3.1 unifies the connector on both ends of the cable, which is now smaller and roughly the size of a Type-B micro-USB 2.0 connector. It is also reversible; meaning it has matching rows of contacts on both sides and you can plug it in whichever way you choose.
Before we go any further, let’s revisit four of the more popular main USB types:
- USB Type-A is the original and most widely used, found on almost all USB flash drives.
- USB Type-B has a squarish connector, most commonly used on printers, sometimes even on 3.5-inch external hard disk drives.
- Mini-USB Type-B was popular for a while with smartphones like older BlackBerries, and is still used by most 2.5-inch external hard disk drives.
- Micro-USB Type-B is the most prevalent form of connector used in almost all non-Apple smartphones today.
We have been familiar with the hack job that is USB 3.0 Micro-B that is adopted by Samsung on its flagships like the Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy S5, but the connector just looks like a micro-USB with an extension making it wider (almost the width of a Type-A), which defeats the purpose of micro-USB’s portability aim. Type-C changes this by offering twice the transfer speed and just half the size.
So here are the four main advantages of Type-C USB:
- Reversible. When USB 3.1 hits, the connectors and ports will all be in the same size, so the cables can be plugged in either way. The connectors are also reversible as mentioned earlier.
- Fast charge. USB 3.1 offers 5,000mA and up to 100W of power, powerful enough to charge a laptop. That’s significantly more than USB 3.0’s 900mA, for up to 4.5W of power. To put it at an ever better perspective, USB 2.0 only offers 500mA, up to 2.5W of power.
- 10Gbps. Considering how small the connector is, the speed is rather impressive. USB 3.0 delivers up to 5Gbps, but USB 3.1 doubles that to serve up to 10Gbps (gigabits per second); that’s equivalent to 1.25GBps (gigabytes per second). Intel’s latest Thunderbolt could go up to 20Gbps, but it is mainly found only on Macs today.
- Compatibility. USB Type-C is the recognized standard by the USB-IF as well as the USB 3.0 Promoter Group (Hewlett-Packard Company, Intel Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, Renesas Electronics, STMicroelectronics, and Texas Instruments), ensuring that it is backwards compatible with USB Type-A, mini-, and micro-USB connectors.
Speaking of compatibility, there are also obvious disadvantages of the new USB 3.1 Type-C connector, at least for now. Even the USB 3.0 standard, that uses Type-A connectors, are not widely adopted on USB flash drives and cables yet, due to the higher cost. Type-C could very well take a few years before we start to see it in the form of storage sticks and smartphone chargers. Although it is backwards compatible by using Type-A/micro-USB adapters, you won’t get the charging speed and the fast data transfers. USB 3.1 should also only come in the Type-C flavor for now, meaning that in the future, all USB flash drives and USB ports, will be physically incompatible with conventional USB Type-A connectors we’ve been using for more than 15 years now.
USB has certainly come a long way since the introduction of USB 1.1 in August 1998. Less than two years later, it has be updated to USB 2.0, which is still very prevalent until today. USB 3.0 came along at around 2008, and though it is the preferred serial bus for file transfers today, many cheap USB drives are still on version 2.0. This is not to mention that almost all smartphones are still using the 14-year-old spec. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, and we can’t wait to see new laptops and smartphones adopting this new standard.
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