EU law mandating universal chargers for devices comes into force

Don't buy Apple to be compatible.

This sounds great until you've had to repair an old car.

Everything rusts, warps, etc. The same things that make it hard to change your brakes will make it hard to change the battery pack, and you're expecting a robot to do it for you (and fast!).

There were companies built on this idea. I think they've all gone under at this point.

Yes and no. No need to hot swap massive EV batteries. Rapid is fast enough. But yes so the EV can be upgraded. The batteries go obsolete quicker than they degrade. So make it so we can swap the batteries and keep the rest running. In fact, just right-to-repair the whole car. In fact, the whole everything!

That is something that I wish would come true. This would also open EVs to the industry in some new ways. Currently it kinda sucks if you have machines that have to be able to run the whole day without big interruptions. When you're able to just swap the batteries in like 5 Minutes this machines don't have to rely on fossil fuels that much and are open to be replaced by electric ones.

What I'm thinking about are machines like tractors for farming. During the summer it happens that they are running for 8+ hours without interruptions. Building a battery this big will be quite challengening. However, if you're able to swap out the batteries after like 2 hours and then continue with work you effectively solved one of the biggest problems with not that much of a hassle.

One of the benefits of EVs is we can get rid of a lot of infrastructure. Everywhere already has electrical so home and destination chargers are a minor add on and it’s only superchargers that are new infrastructure. Meanwhile the entire gasoline and oil refining, distribution, and tens of thousands of gas stations can just go away, along with their associated pollution.

Swappable batteries may sound cool but they’re less edficient plus now we have to build up a huge new set of infrastructure agai, we have to standardize batteries, and we can’t build them into structural parts. The only real advantage is speed but that’s not much advantage if you need to drive somewhere. I’ve never had to charge more than 25 minutes at a supercharger, so swapping a battery is only convenient if it’s at most ten minutes more away. Then you’re also assuming there will be more more battery and charger advances, such as those solid state batteries that a couple vendors claim are already in production, such as 800v charging that a few vehicles already can do, such as the latest Superchsrgers that can charge faster than any car can accept so far, or the semi chargers that have a few built out.

Long before you could build out a huge new infrastructure for seappable batteries and standardize cars around it, we’ll already have charging improvements that will make seappables irrelevant. You could argue they already are irrelevant in some areas

So add infrastructure every town and each 200km (120 miles) on the highway to robotically swap batteries and charge the stored batteries (and so many stored batteries if it's storing enough for 500 cars an hour

As opposed to building chargers with standard connectors which can charge a car in 15 minutes enough to reach the next charger, 30 minutes to 80% (which is generally the limit in high traffic chargers)

I have seen the cages of propane tanks for barbeques and boggle at the idea of the number of 50 to 100kWh batteries a swap station on a highway would need to store

It is great until the ownership and business model comes into consideration.

And range just dropped by half. Going somewhere without a loader? Have fun charging way more often.

Would still be nice for road trips in the civilized world though.

Noice. I am definitely waiting until 2028ish before upgrading my phone, if not a bit longer.

Based AF eu

while 2027 is better than nothing, I still wonder why it took them so long. Glue in smartphones has been around for probably a decade now.

Also, I think, anything that has a battery, should be user replacable... even teeny-tiny earbuds.

Sadly, it still allows to glue batteries with very little requirements.

That's true, but if the EU could force every phone maker to make the battery replaceable by the customer this would be a huuuuuuge step in the right direction and reduce electronic waste.

You must have been in death valley or something because the glue doesn't melt into like 80° C

Ok so make it an option

I have an iPhone 16 and can just from dead to close to 50% in just about half an hour. Is your charger at least 30 watts and supports USB-PD? (I’m using a 65w charger, but remember reading somewhere the iPhone only uses 30w or a bit more)

MagSafe fast charging is only 25w, so charging by cable with a high enough wattage charger is always faster for me.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX%3A32022L2380

USB C is mentioned in annex Ia and as an example in articles 11 and 12. As I understand previous articles, it is possible to use other standards that satisfy citeria from article 9.

The cable that comes with the original Nintendo switch is weird. Point blank will not charge things except the switch, I have no idea why Nintendo would care to limited like that.

Likewise, I have a speaker thing (w-king brand) that will only charge off USB A to C, and will not charge off any USB C power supply

cables and chargers are “active” in the sense they negotiate charge rates and other functionality

Just so you know "active cable" already has a separate meaning: They repeat the USB signals somewhere in the middle for a longer transmission distance.

I think the better idea is to pick up the terminology from the USB-IF, they speak of electronical marking, or e-markers in the cables. It's usually a small chip integrated in one of the plug assemblies.

Apple claim that they will get around to implementing 3.0 data transverse speeds when they next refresh their chipsets, but they haven't had time yet. I'm skeptical about this excuse because it's not like this law is a shock to them, they've known it's coming for the best part of 5 years, which is proved by how much they try to argue against it.

I'm not an apple fan, but this is just a dumb take. they have their place, even if it's not under your ownership.

I was honestly on the fence of getting a MacBook recently as my first newly purchased Laptop, but ultimately decided against it.

Got a fully decked out ThinkPad P14s instead for about 1800€. Meanwhile the new M4 MacBook Pro starts at 1900€. But I agree that Macs still are good value compared other Apple products.

Then the Apple Max which are decent machines for a while and then need an upgrade (which cannot be done because Apple) necessitating an entire new device.

Apple is absolutely overpriced dogshit. There is no legtimitation for the prices they charge. However, Apple has two advantages(as far from what I heard from a lot of others). Its brain dead easy and works. Every Idiot is capable of using apple and won't have that much problems with it. Apple is the right thing for the digital toddlers that want to have it easy. The Ecosystem is great as long as you don't want to break out of it.

I personally would never buy Apple since I like a certain form of complexity and don't want a completely locked down system. However, if you only care about something where you don't have to think and that just works, Apple is The right thing for you.

The very same. I saved a few dollars here and there which I would be more than happy to trade for some decent regulations on the things I buy.

What’s funny is that I still got taxed for the expensive stuff I bought, just not a few take out orders and one toy I bought. Success?

Awesome! I knew by commenting someone educated would come along. Thank you very much.

And they're using recommendations from the USB consortium, which is comprised of all the large manufacturers in the world, so it should always be up to date during the review process.

Manufacturers are allowed to add supplementary charging standards on top of USB-C PD

Controversial opinion: I wish this wasn't the case. So many different proprietary protocols, most of the time you'll still need a specific adapter, and in some cases even a proprietary cable to utilize the full speed, and nowadays most devices come without the adapter.
And there's even PPS in the PD spec allowing to request for a specific voltage rather than something in an existing list.

But I do also have some personal grievances here:

1. Mi TurboCharge - This may be something based on PD, but still being something separate. I don't know, but I do know it requires more pins than USB-A has. 5 pins. Somewhere I read this is connected to a CC pin in the USB-C connector. But no, they did not use USB-C, they used USB-A, with an extra pin. Only shortly before the phone died I finally figured out why it wasn't charging as fast as expected - I wasn't using their proprietary cable.

2. My current phone's interference (?) with Qualcomm QC 2.0 - Somehow when using a cable with non-perfect connection on QC-compatible adapters, when I move the USB-A connector, it starts triggering 12V mode until it finally shows overvoltage error and slows down to 7W. QC 2.0 is how my USB tester identifies it. This is a MediaTek-based device, so I don't think it would support QC. The original adapter uses PD and some 11V 6A thing with unknown protocol. Perhaps that is where the problem originates, I don't know what data it sends down. But testing with OTG adapter on the original brick it seems the protocol needs the extra pins of USB-C to work properly.

I've had 3 phones that supported some fast charging, so far 2 of them made it into a confusing mess. Had they all used just PD it would have been a better experience.

On the downside, you can’t tell what the port supports by just looking at it.

I liked the magnetic apple connectors.

I hate Apple though.

I wouldn’t have even known what to google to learn this. Thanks for sharing! I actually love the C form factor I didn’t realize that was kinda what made it C and not what it could do. I appreciate your response.

What I don't understand is what was wrong with mini-USB.

Too thick? Just why do people want a portable computer to be thinner that their wallet, or their notebook, or their damned pen, or that Snickers bar in their pocket which nobody made thinner. Who the hell told them that "miniaturization being the future of tech" has anything to do with the box inside which that tech is mounted being just a bit thinner? I mean, were it thin enough to put computers into printed magazine pages, maybe (I think I've read that someone did this, with a computer kinda as powerful as ZX Spectrum). Why do they specifically need it? Not to appear "modern", but really?

The question is, because for me personally mini-USB was very convenient. It held well, was easy enough to stick the right way (and not ruin it trying to stick it the wrong way).

Now, I guess USB-C is fine if it can do the same and go both ways. I actually like it, except RPi 4 is the only device I have needing it.

It's just ... how can one try so many connector types for one group of standards?..

This, USB-C is just the connector shape. USB-A is the standard square plug everyone knows, USB-B has several different ends, some more well known than others. The full sized "printer/hub" one, mini-B and micro-B which more people know. USB-A to A cables aren't common, more akin to an Ethernet crossover cable, so you're almost always going to see one of the B connectors.

USB-C is just the newest plug design, the actual cable and communication protocols have changed numerous times over the decades. USB-C might have been introduced alongside USB 3.0 and the massive increase in charging and data speeds with the new standard, but they are not exclusive.

The most obvious example is probably the iPhone 15 and 16, both had a USB-C plug, but the devices only supported USB 2.0 protocols.

I had not thought of this good point.

There's only so much power you can put through such a small connector. I could certainly see a high end gaming laptop requiring more than 240W since GPUs keep getting more power hungry. They could increase the voltage a bit, but I doubt they will go much higher.

I did read the article but didn’t know anything about EU law. Someone else shared an excerpt of the law and kindly explained how it worked. Thanks for your response though.

What happens if the better technology is invented by a company not part of that chosen tech club? They get to block it's adoption?

I’m not sure. I know I could get a high speed one but tossing my phone on at night and currently it lasts all day most days. Same with my watch.

This is an interesting article, but I think that this standardisation is exactly for port being the same, not for pinning specific implementation of the 600+ pages long standard.

Thanks for the article, cool read!

If you don't know the answer it is of course perfectly acceptable to just not provide one.

Why wouldn't they be allowed to use it?

Computers have room for multiple ports and is where a new standard would crop up anyway even without the law, just like where USB-C started out.

Yeah, or since people are going to want their cute colored cables, do colored stripes on the connectors or something. Even on the metal connector itself, but not on the inside like old USB-A connectors.

I have seen toothbrushes with USB-C, they just connect to the docking station. Which makes sense IMO, you wouldn't want to plug and unplug your toothbrush every time you want to use it.

It's like micro-USB-AB, but USB-CDE

USB-CDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

yay

Also half of their software straight up didn’t work. My OnePlus was the most powerful least useful device I have owned.

8 years, actually.

Not touching them with a barge pole

that was before this law, so quite irrelevant to the question.

But you do need to pay for a Vendor ID, you can’t just YOLO it?

I think what bugged my memory was that you have to pay for a Vendor ID.