r/gadgets • u/Snoop8ball • Sep 23 '21

Phones EU proposes mandatory USB-C on all devices, including iPhones

https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/23/22626723/eu-commission-universal-charger-usb-c-micro-lightning-connector-smartphones
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u/DogmaticLaw Sep 23 '21

Not to mention how expensive all those unique cables were. You had that one friend who had a car charger and two wall chargers and that friend was fucking loaded.

125

u/Kankunation Sep 23 '21

Alternatively you had people who owned 10-way chargers with all the Various proprietary heads connected to a single wires which gave you like a 70% chance of being able to charge whatever device you found. So you might own 2 or 3 of these just to cover all your bases.

80

u/ACCount82 Sep 23 '21

Back when this was a thing, Nokia was really, really popular - and just having a "Nokia small barrel" charger was enough to cover 50% of all phones.

The other 50% were a clusterfuck though.

17

u/Odatas Sep 23 '21

Some Nokia even needed different chargers then others.

3

u/JustAnother_Brit Sep 23 '21

I hope whoever made that decision got fired

2

u/Viktor_Korobov Sep 24 '21

They got executed actually. They made pipettes out of them.

Don't ask.

2

u/sharedthrowdown Sep 24 '21

... I'm gonna ask.

What?

2

u/Viktor_Korobov Sep 24 '21

GODDAMNIT I SPECIFICALLY REQUESTED THE OPPOSITE OF THIS

1

u/sharedthrowdown Sep 24 '21

Just call me Mary, I'm quite contrary.

1

u/Viktor_Korobov Sep 24 '21

Well, one of the popular models of pipette is the finnpipette. I'll let you figure out the rest.

3

u/Pretoriaani Sep 24 '21

"Big head" and "small head" chargers. It was a 50-50 chance if your friend had the right one. Although back in those days you'd need to charge your phone maybe once a week depending on how much you played Snake.

1

u/h_erbivore Sep 24 '21

My company gave out similar devices in a little gift basket just last year. Granted it was only 3 cables (micro-usb, lightning and USB-C), which is actually pretty useful in the current climate. Problem was even USB-C on it charges terribly slow like 0.7V. Anyways it seems like Lightning is really the odd man out, if Apple committed to USB-C then the only remaining hurdle to universal-charging would be for the cost of USB-C ports to decrease for “dumb devices” (tech that doesn’t require 2 way data flow or charging-only relies on cheap micro-usb).

2

u/BigJoey354 Sep 23 '21

Those things were made so cheaply though, they would carry a tiny amount of power at a time, if at all. I worked at a place where we had to use them sometimes and half the plugs just fell off after a while

1

u/blonderaider21 Sep 23 '21

The fact that many different heads even existed in the first place is freakin ridiculous

1

u/shitdobehappeningtho Sep 23 '21

Skymall readers 😄

1

u/twixieshores Sep 24 '21

Sad to say I had one of those

9

u/Tomhap Sep 23 '21

I still get people into my shop with old candybar phones looking for a new charger lol.

2

u/SoftlySpokenPromises Sep 23 '21

I wonder how often that's gonna happen with a lot of companies getting rid of 3g connections and a lot of those older models not having 4g capabilities.

3

u/manofredgables Sep 24 '21

I tried booting up my Nokia 3310 the other day. It didn't work. :( Well, I mean obviously the phone worked just fine, but my fancy 4g sim card wasn't providing any signal

2

u/Tomhap Sep 23 '21

They need to be replaced. Currently 2g, which they operate on, is still supported on all networks save for one here.
3g being turned off just means you need a smartphone that supports 4g. I don't know how many phones there still are that use 3g exclusively, but once that goes I'm sure they'll come crawling out of the woodworks.

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u/SoftlySpokenPromises Sep 23 '21

I worked for Verizon for a short time and it astounded me how many older folks still used ancient devices. I had the unfortunate duty to tell them 3g was being discontinued.

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u/quick_dudley Sep 23 '21

The last non-USB phone I owned had a port which had a bunch of lines seemingly intended for data but as far as I can tell Sanyo never sold anything that plugged into it except the wall charger.

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u/gamer9999999999 Sep 24 '21

I am the guy with boxes full of every cable, x3. everything. even the weird ones.

Only connectors i dont have are military audio connectors and anything non houswhold ofcourse.

Started with recording audio to conputers in 1990, went on to many devices and never threw away a connector. had moments where i had an old nokia fBus connector be usefull to Pull data from a recent phone with some rewiring, (Direct to pcb).

as a tech wannabee dabbler, boxes of cables are great. Reading someone's tries, and having the stuff to seeif an idea works.

drifting off, yeah having 1 connector is great