In a country so divided, one thing unites us all: the USB-Type C connector.
Yes, you read that correctly. USB-Type C, also known as USB-C or just Type-C, is the connector with the small oval-shaped port that seemingly comes with all of your electronic devices these days. And by all, we mean all.
“Airplanes, automobiles, cell phones, desk lamps, displays, electronic toothbrushes, medical electronics, power tools, wall sockets. It’s literally everywhere,” Jeff Ravencraft, president and COO of the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), a nonprofit organization that looks after the standards for USB technology, told IT Brew.
For the average person, the USB-C connector may be the reason why forgetting a phone charger at home is less of a headache these days: Just ask anyone around, and chances are good someone is carrying one. The widespread shift to USB-C in the past decade marked a significant turning point in the hardware industry.
Life before C. USB-C connectors first hit the scene in 2014 when the USB-IF released Type-C specification 1.0. At the time, the tech industry was ripe for a new connector, several hardware experts told IT Brew. One big reason was the desire for a jack-of-all-trades connector that was capable of charging, transmitting high-performance data, and supporting high-performance display, said Ben Hacker, general manager of Intel’s client connectivity division.
“Typically, for the highest performance things, that would be a dedicated connector just for that,” Hacker said. “So, just the best display connector, maybe just the best data connector, and then charging, historically, had been separate.”
Hacker, who joined Intel as a full-time staffer in 2004, added that the tech industry yearned for a singular connector that could be used beyond just the PC market.
Around this time, Ravencraft added, the industry was at an inflection point. Smaller form-factors were emerging, including mobile phones, MP3 players, digital cameras, and more. While Mini-B and the Micro USB connectors were available, these predecessor connectors weren’t designed to support large devices.
“They were originally designed specifically to support cell phones and they were not really robust enough for larger devices,” said Ravencraft, who worked as a senior technology strategist at Intel for more than two decades before becoming the president of the USB-IF in 2010.
Abdul R. Ismail, senior principal engineer at Intel and chairman of the USB-IF, said the quest for a new connector was also driven by the changing function of USB technology and power demands.
“It used to be [that] keyboards and mice and hubs were the number one thing that people were using USB for,” Ismail said. “That transitioned to power. People were using it for charging all the time.”
A star was born. The USB-C connector caught the attention of the tech sector. According to Ismail it successfully combined the three functions that previously required a variety of connectors to accomplish. USB-C specification 1.0 was able to support up to 100 watts of power. In comparison, Micro USB can support up to 7.5 watts.
“You plug your laptop and you just have one cable going into it and you can do power, you can do your video out, and you can do all your other data as well,” Ismail said.
The USB-C connector also had a reversible design, meaning that it didn’t matter which way you plugged it in. Kevin Koestler, business lead of USB-C controllers at Texas Instruments, said this was previously a large pain point for USB-A users.
“You have a 50/50 chance of making sure the Type A port is plugged in,” added Koestler, who joined Texas Instruments in 2017.
Hacker said the USB-C connector was kind of a big deal because it “changed the paradigm” of how people thought of USB; traditionally, USB cords had a different connector at each end of the cable (for instance, one side may plug into your computer while the other into your phone). However, USB-C introduced the new concept of having both ends have a Type C connector.
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“That was kind of a new experience for customers and users and people who are just buying the technology and aren’t deep in the weeds of engineering,” Hacker said.
Embrace it! While the USB-C connector had an attractive design and advanced functionality, it was an open question whether the industry would embrace the newcomer. Ravencraft said a connector transition is one of the “hardest transitions a company can make.”
“A connector change is the most difficult change you can make in the industry, second to none,” Ravencraft said. “It affects the consumer. The consumer doesn’t necessarily want to get rid of a product that they paid good money for and it still works fine.”
Despite this, Ismail called the transition to USB-C the “fastest-adopted change in connected technology” the USB-IF has worked on.
So, how exactly did USB-C connectors become ubiquitous in today’s tech landscape? Koestler said the transition happened in three waves. The first occurred within the PC, notebook, and laptop industry.
“It was a natural evolution,” Koestler said. “They had Type A. They wanted something that was reversible, that had higher data, higher power, and so that transition was pretty seamless.”
He recalled Google’s Chromebooks as one of the first devices to take the big leap to Type C. In March 2015, Google announced that its new Chromebook Pixel would have a USB-C port.
That next month, Apple released its first MacBook with a USB-Type C port and went so far as to make USB-Type C the sole port for the device. Hacker called the move “bold” and said it garnered a lot of feedback from users.
“That’s a testament to how much they thought that connector was really gonna take over the world, which eventually it has,” he said.
Koestler said the next big wave occurred when the European Union made a successful push for a single connector in a bid to reduce e-waste and provide convenience to customers. In 2022, the EU Parliament voted in favor of requiring phones and small devices to have USB-C ports, giving companies two years to comply. Koestler said this ultimately led to USB-C ports being added to phones, with Apple leading this wave. Apple’s iPhone 15 family of phones sported the Type-C ports. The Galaxy Note 7, released in 2016, was the first Samsung phone to have the new port.
The last and current wave has occurred among a wider range of equipment and industries, Koestler said.
“Not only is it consumer electronics, but now we’re starting to see another wave of industrial equipment…appliances, e-bikes, wireless speakers, server racks, even access points, [and] routers,” he said.
What’s on the cord-rizon. Today, USB-C connectors and ports have become ubiquitous. In fact, the connectors are so universal that manufacturers are taking note.
“We’re starting to see some interesting trends where the customers that we deal with don’t want to ship a charger at all,” Koestler said. “Because it’s so universal, now our customers can just make their end product and then they just assume that the consumer, us, would have a USB-C charger.”
Ravencraft, who says he has dedicated most of his life to USB technology, said USB-C has “hit the high-end sweet spot on power.” The latest specification of USB-C technology allows it to support up to 240 watts of power.
“We believe for where we’re at with data performance as well as power, that we have plenty of headroom with this connector,” Ravencraft said.