this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2024

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India to mandate USB-C connectors on smartphones and laptops by 2026 (www.gsmarena.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/technology

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[–] ladicius 109 points 5 months ago (5 children)

What has the EU ever done for us?

[–] [email protected] 75 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Well, apart from the free movement of people and goods, the common currency, the gdpr, the international students and the consumer protection what has the EU ever done for us?

Brought peace.

Uh peace, shut up.

[–] then_three_more 5 points 5 months ago

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=q5D0t6ejcGE

[–] anonymous111 13 points 5 months ago

Aqueducts!

[–] Viking_Hippie 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)

This same thing, amongst other excellent recent pro-consumer rulings?

[–] [email protected] 47 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I think they may have been rhetorical.

[–] Viking_Hippie 11 points 5 months ago

Fair enough lol

[–] jaybone 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Who is us?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

You, me, a few other people.

[–] AA5B 1 points 5 months ago

From Boston Harbor: “representation without taxation! Everyone drink tea!”

[–] jaybone 28 points 5 months ago (1 children)

When will they mandate stopping scam calls and stealing databases full of offshored data?

[–] [email protected] 34 points 5 months ago (2 children)

They already are illegal. The problem is the police are corrupt and they're bought off, and the central government doesn't really care that much, so they don't do anything about it.

If you actually report these people sometimes they do get arrested, it just depends on who the chief of police in that area is. There's a reason they're all in the same part of India and it's because the police in that area have been bought off.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

There's a reason they're all in the same part of India and it's because the police in that area have been bought off.

It's Kolkata right? That's the sense I get from watching anti scammer YouTubers like Jim Browning.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Yeah, there was a BBC documentary with him in it, and they actually demonstrate this. Various scammers are arrested and even sentenced, and then for some totally innocent reason a mistrial gets called, and it all has to go to trial again, and surprise surprise in the intervening time the police have managed to lose all of the evidence.

The only good thing about that whole case was that when they were arrested the scammers faces were broadcast all over national television in both India and the UK. Not that been shown in the UK will do everything, but I'm sure they don't have a great time in India because the locals hate them. Oh and also when the police are showing off their scammers, for some reason they make them hold hands with the police. It's really funny how unhappy they look about it.

[–] johannesvanderwhales 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Doesn't the use of VoIP often make these hard to trace, as well?

[–] NutWrench 4 points 5 months ago

Yup. With VOIP, you can spoof any phone number. If this technology were fixed, 99% of spam calls would disappear, and Caller ID would be worth something again. Our government is either too lazy or bought-off to fix this problem.

They DID enact the national Do Not Call list and created heavy fines for people who violate that list, while knowing full well that they couldn't catch the spammers in the first place (because of VOIP spoofing).

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

Brussels effect baby

(Or is it Bruxelles? Brüssel?)

[–] laxe 4 points 5 months ago

Waiting until 2026 is so long

[+] [email protected] -141 points 5 months ago (7 children)

Can’t wait until USB-D is the standard and these dumb areas countries are stuck using outdated devices because someone mandated a technology that will go obsolete faster than the law can be changed.

[–] TheGrandNagus 95 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Omg you are so SMART! How is it that ONLY YOU have thought of this?!! You should, like, rule the world or something, because you're clearly so much SMARTER than everybody else!

Ah wait no, the EU directive already has allowances for newly emerging standards and isn't actually tied to USB-C specifically. I.e. if a USB-D came out, it could be used without changes to the law.

This India one is likely the same, or can be easily amended if it isn't.

And new standards take time to propagate in the market. USB C was designed in 2012 and the first phone with it was in 2015, from some unknown Chinese brand. It took major brands until 2017! And other devices took even longer than phones. Do you really think they couldn't update USB-C to D in the law in a timeframe like that? Of course they could.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 5 months ago (2 children)

USB-C is also ridiculously future proof and flexible, because it's just a connector.
We are already doing 200w power and 40gbps data transfer rates, using various standards.

Now, standardising on a standard would be neat. But that isn't going to happen

[–] TheGrandNagus 16 points 5 months ago

Indeed. USB-C is already a lot more feature-rich now than it was when initially designed, yet it hasn't necessitated moving to a different port or broken protocol compatibility with older USB versions.

I'm just pointing out that even if we decide to move beyond USB-C, the law already allows for that.

I truly don't understand why some are against the law pushing for a standard here. Would these people like it if different branded lightbulbs used different sockets? Or their TV, toaster, washing machine, playstation etc all used different plug sockets? Or only Volkswagen garages had fuel nozzles that fit into Volkswagen cars? Standards are a good thing.

[–] AA5B 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

This is the downside of USB-C: a single connector used by many different capability ports and cables. On another thread I was complaining that laptops/computers still have too few USB-C ports and too many USB-A that I want to migrate away from. Why shouldn’t I be able to have all small, symmetrical connectors, like I have for the last decade with Lightning?

Some of the answers were that you can’t support the power and bandwidth for that many and there is no easy way to distinguish either ports or cables that do from those that don’t. That’s a pretty bad excuse when standardized marking could take care of that so easily. Even with USB-A there is a convention with color of the port - it would be trivial to do the same

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

If I traveled 100 years into the future I actually wouldn't be surprised if they're still using USB-C. A different version of USBC but it'll still be the same cable, the only reason they would upgrade to another cable is if they decided for some reason that it needed to be able to carry enough current to vaporize you.

[+] [email protected] -30 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Oh yes I’m almost as smart as the geniuses involved in EU tech laws that wanted to spy on all your encrypted conversations.

Clearly the EU only employs the best and brightest, who never make stupid decisions.

Could is not the problem. Nearly all of today’s problems could be solved through effective legislation. The problem isn’t could they, it’s would they and who would push for the updated laws.

[–] TheGrandNagus 26 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Oh yes I’m almost as smart as the geniuses involved in EU tech laws that wanted to spy on all your encrypted conversations.

Do you mean the one that was proposed and then was immediately shot down? Try reading beyond the scary headlines. Any representative can propose a law, doesn't mean it'll get voted through and enacted.

Could is not the problem. Nearly all of today’s problems could be solved through effective legislation. The problem isn’t could they, it’s would they and who would push for the updated laws.

Like I said, the law doesn't need to be updated as it was forward-thinking in its design. It already allows for emerging standards. And why would they decide not to update it if they didn't have that provision? Why would they do that?

[–] tigerjerusalem 51 points 5 months ago

Ah yes, let's go back to that amazing time of pure innovation where every fucking company had their own connector standard for data, power and audio. Good times.

[–] Thekingoflorda 36 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Why would the form factor of the connector need to be different to improve it?

[+] [email protected] -22 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Who knows, why does USB use 7 different shapes already?

[–] Thekingoflorda 20 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Previous connectors had inherent flaws. The USB-C connector is sturdy, is easy to use etc. But even if we had made the micro-usb connector the only legal connector, it wouldn’t have been the end of the world. Existing standards can be improved instead of making new shapes each time.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I find it a bit annoying that different usb-c implementations have different capabilities.

As in, not all cables are compatible with all devices, and there's not even a standardised way or reporting capabilities.

What's the point of being able to put every plug in every socket if you don't know if it's going to work?

[–] Thekingoflorda 6 points 5 months ago

Yea but that can be fixed by improving the current standard, not by changing the shape.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

My kitchen scales have a USB-C port. While I certainly would like it to have the capability to stream GB/s worth of measuring data over it fact of the matter is I paid like ten bucks for it, all it knows is how to charge the CR2032 cell inside. I also don't expect it to support displayport alt mode, it has a seven-segment display I don't really think it's suitable as a computer monitor.

What's true though is that it'd be nice to have proper labelling standards for cables. It should stand to reason that the cable that came with the scales doesn't support high performance modes, heck it doesn't even have data lines literally the only thing it's capable of is low-power charging, nothing wrong with that but it'd be nice to be able to tell that it can only do that at a semi-quick glance when fishing for a cable in the spaghetti bin.

[–] baatliwala 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

USB-C is a bitch to clean, I have had multiple devices where fast charging stopped working until I cleaned out the port or held the wire in a particular angle.

[–] Thekingoflorda 4 points 5 months ago

Yea that's a valid concern. But if a new standard ever get's invented that is clearly better the law can easily be switched. And if it doesn't... USB-C is still more than fine.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago

A and B are the original, used for host and device sides, respectively. C is the same on both ends of the cable because figures there's device classes which can sensibly act as both, in particular phones. It's also the most modern of the bunch supporting higher data transfer and power delivery rates because back in the days where A and B where designed people were thinking about connecting mice and keyboards, not 8k monitors or kWhs worth of lithium batteries.

The whole mini/micro shennanigans are alternative B types and quite deeply flawed, mechanically speaking.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 5 months ago

At least in the EU USB-C is only the standard by 2nd degree, the actual mandatory connector is whatever connector the industry consortium decides on. For now it just happens to be USB-C

[–] [email protected] 20 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Your comprehension of this technology is so limited that you actually think that's how it works.

The letter simply indicates that the physical wiring in the cable is different to a previous iteration of the USB standard. There isn't a great deal of reason that they would change that now it has a pretty good potential for energy transfer and high data transfer speeds. In 15 years they might be looking at changing it but not any time soon.

Usb and B came out at the same time in the '90s for god's sake.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago (2 children)

The USB-C standard will probably last as long as USB-A has so far or longer.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 months ago (1 children)

USB-A: 28 years and going

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago (1 children)

With 7 years of active use, USB-C is already 25% of the way there then.

Once you actually start using devices that fully utilize all that USB-C has to offer, there is no going back. Getting lots of Power Delivery, Display, Networking and enough bandwidth for other USB devices all over one cable is just so good. At work i just walk up to any monitor, which will have all the necessary stuff attached, plug in one cable to my laptop and im good to go.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I resorted to splitting everything because I was burning docks, so now I've got four plugs taken on my laptop: a small USBC dock for one HDMI and power, one regular HDMI, one USBC to HDMI and one USBA for a four USBA hub... Which sucks because one USBC is able to handle all my needs, the docks are just shit...

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago

Some of us live in functioning democracies where "switch to USB-D" won't come with an "it's illegal to give your son a name that wasn't previous a job title" attachment.