I didn’t have one until I had to get a new phone last year that came with one. If it just came with a USB-C to USB-C cable and no brick, I wouldn’t have had a single thing to charge the phone with. I have no USB-C port on my PC. I didn’t have my PS5 yet. And I didn’t even have any other USB-C using devices. Tons of devices still just have Micro-USB ports. Especially if they are cheap.
IDK about you, but I’m not getting or updating all my shit every few months. I still only have this phone, that one brick and now a PS5 and its controllers that use USB-C.
You’re describing a USB-C -USB-A cable. OOP describes a USB-C - USB-C cable. I didn’t have an outlet brick with a USB-C until I bought my current phone (S23 U) which only came with a cable like the one in the post
I have a dozen regular USB blocks from the before fore times. But I only have one C block from my first pixel phone. Now they all come with C to C which are borderline useless to I had to buy a bunch of A to C cables to use the old blocks.
Not necessarily maybe you live a long way from the store. If I wanted to get a USB-C adaptor I’d probably have to go to the other end of the street, but that’s because I live in the town centre.
From where I used to live that would be a 10 mile walk, which while totally doable is a bit far in my opinion, especially if I have literally anything else I want to do with my weekend.
And, in the end, we a have to decide on one standard. There used to be tons of different cables, and that wasn’t exactly a better situation. Better to just bite the bullet and say this is the standard moving forward.
I’ll bet my left nut that you don’t have a male USB-A to female USB-C adapter that can support fast charging. So you’ll still end up ordering one from Amazon - a local store is unlikely to carry one.
USB-A to USB-C is the current standard. I am convinced they include a USB-C to USB-C cable because most people don’t have those chargers, so they’ll be more likely to order one with their phone.
USB-A doesn’t carry enough voltage to support USB-C fast charging rates. So even if you have an adapter (I have a few), you’re not getting the best performance from your devices.
Depends on what you call fast charging. My phone does 12V @ 1.25A over USB A. My 45W Deck charger isn’t charging my phone any faster so I’m clearly getting the best performance out of my charger.
1.25a is not fast charging, at least not the new standard. You need at least 3a, and 5 is ideal. You also need a matching cable capable of carrying those loads. USB-A caps out at 1.5a.
What standard are we talking about? I don’t think there’s any standard names “fast charging”.
People on the internet seem to use it to indicate anything faster than the 5W USB 2 allows (7.5W if your ports exceed spec for old fashioned iPad charging).
1.25A on nornal USB voltage isn’t fast charging, I agree, but the voltage is negotiated to 12V, which turns those 1.25A into 15 watts. That’s three times the standard spec for USB charging and twice the spec for the weird 1.5A charging that Apple and other phone manufacturers squeezed out of old USB ports.
My Android firmware calls this fast charging (one USB PD succeeds) at the very least, and I agree with it.
C-to-C is capable of much faster charging than A-to-C; the weird “C plug on phones but A plug on chargers” period was a mistake, plain and simple. For modern tablets with giant batteries an A-to-C charger would take much longer to charge.
You can use your ten year old charging brick if you want, the A-to-C from your old phone will still work with your new phone (unless you’ve bought a phone from a brand that decides that standards are for losers, like OnePlus, then who knows how fast you’ll be charging, but that’s on the manufacturers making their own USB-PD for reasons).
Sadly, we still have tons of cables because companies are cheap. Samsung, for example, sells fast charging cables (that are USB 2.0). They also have USB 3+ cables, but they’re not rated for charging as much. Then there are the outdated USB C-to-A cables which can’t charge much faster than 15W, unless you buy a phone from one of those Chinese brands that have built their own version of USB-PD over USB 2 with chargers that work entirely differently and special cables.
Phone shops and Amazon try to sell you e-waste and manufacturers are giving you cheap cables. In the countries that require them to pack a charger (France, for instance) they also ship you gimped chargers. Everyone should just get one or two 100W Thunderbolt C-to-C cables and one of those USB PD chargers. You can use good cables and a good charger for just about everything, the crap your manufacturer ships with your phone/tablet/headphones is almost always incompatible e-waste.
Only Apple seems to default to decent USB-C cables, but then they’re all weird about USB-C.
OR. The cell phone vendor gets a big box of chargers along with a consignment of phones. “Do you need a charger?” “Yes.” “Here you go.” “No I already have one.” “Okay, have a nice day sir.”
Yes, if you also have to purchase a charger, which comes with its own packaging, especially if you order that charger for delivery, separate from the phone. But companies like to lie and say they’re excluding required peripherals for environmental reasons, when really it’s just another profit line on their balance sheet.
If you buy a phone and the charger at the same time there is no extra packaging. The box that a charger comes in is such a tiny amount of “waste” it’s negligible.
If you buy a phone the realise you don’t have a charger and order a charger for delivery then that’s on you.
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