A brief history of USB Type-C-EEWORLD

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In October 2019, Microsoft released the Surface Pro 7, Amazon released the Kindle Fire HD 10, and Sony also announced its latest Play Station 5; these three devices belong to PC, tablet and game console respectively, but compared with their respective previous generation products, these three devices have one thing in common that cannot be ignored - they all use the USB Type-C (also known as USB-C or Type-C) interface.

In this regard, Patrick Moorhead, founder of Moor Insights & Strategy, said in an interview with Wired magazine:

USB-C has become the industry standard for every personal computing and connectivity device.

Type-C’s groundbreaking

In fact, USB Type-C has been around as an interface standard for more than 5 years.

In August 2014, in the newly released USB 3.1 standard, Type-C was officially proposed as an interface; it is a specification for a new type of USB cable and connector, defining a whole new set of USB physical specifications including connectors, ports, containers and cables.

However, Type-C is only one of the three interface styles proposed in the USB 3.1 standard. In fact, in the USB 3.1 standard, there are three interface styles, one is Type-A (Standard-A, the most common USB interface style on traditional computers), one is Type-B (also the existing interface style), and the other is Type-C.

From the naming of the three interface styles, we can see that the developer of the USB 3.1 standard (USB IF Association) is also trying to simplify and unify the complex and diverse interface types that have long existed in the industry.

Simply put, the USB IF Association selected the two most popular USB interfaces out of the nearly ten currently available, named Type-A and Type-B, and then redesigned a new interface and named it Type-C; only these three interfaces can support the data transmission speed, current transmission size and other technical standards under the USB 3.1 standard.

In fact, as a technical standard, the development of each new version of USB must consider the compatibility with the previous version based on technological updates.

Therefore, among the three interfaces of the USB 3.1 standard, the existence of Type-A and Type-B is more about considering the issue of backward compatibility and unifying existing interfaces. In a sense, the existence of the two can be regarded as a compromise between the new standard and the past; of course, this compromise is very necessary.

On the other hand, only Type-C is the pioneering feature of USB 3.1 in terms of interface style. It is precisely because of this that Type-C has attracted worldwide attention during the design stage. When it was finally formed and announced to the world, it aroused a lot of discussion and expectations.

Why Type-C?

So, why USB Type-C?

As more and more new devices pursue lightweight and miniaturization, the "huge" size of traditional USB interfaces has been difficult to meet the needs of device manufacturers and consumers.

At the same time, the problem of traditional USB interfaces requiring repeated plugging and unplugging and finding the "correct" direction has been widely criticized by consumers. Users are in urgent need of an interface that can be plugged in from both sides like the Lightning interface. Especially in devices such as mobile phones that require frequent and large-scale connection of data cables, the experience of plugging in the wrong interface once or twice a day is not user-friendly.

Based on these problems, the developers of the USB standard launched the Type-C physical interface specification, which introduced several major features:

Slim. Different from the traditional Type-A interface commonly seen in daily life, the new Type-C interface has been greatly reduced in size, only 8.3*2.5 mm, which is more suitable for use in increasingly miniaturized computing devices.

No directionality. Similar to Apple's Lightning interface, the Type-C interface has no directional requirements, that is, it can be paired whether it is inserted in the front or back, which greatly improves the ease of use of the USB interface.

However, in addition to convenience, the USB Type-C interface has another layer of symbolic meaning.

The USB standard is based on a basic concept - to standardize the connection and communication between computers and other external devices. Since the USB 1.0 era, people have designed the Type-A interface style used by today's USB 3.1 standard for computers (of course, it was not called this at that time), and this interface style has gone through three generations of standard updates, USB 1.1, USB 2.0 and even USB 3.0, and still survives tenaciously in this world, and once dominated the USB interface type of most computers in the world.

Other external devices connected to computers not only disappeared or emerged in the process of development, but also generated a lot of complex interfaces. In this case, the Type-C interface was born; this interface can not only connect mobile phones, tablets and other devices, but also directly connect to computers - in other words, computers and other devices are more equal at the interface level, computers are no longer the absolute center, and mobile phones and tablets can also be connected via Type-C.

In other words, Type-C actually better proves the arrival of the mobile Internet era; in this era, more and more devices - computers, mobile phones, tablets, TVs, e-book readers and even cars - can access the Internet in different ways, thus weakening the central position of the computer previously symbolized by the Type-A interface.

Type-C has become the industry standard

A few months after the USB 3.1 standard was launched, Type-C was quickly recognized and adopted by the industry.

In the first half of 2015, several technology giants launched different types of Type-C devices, such as Nokia's N1 tablet released in January 2015, Apple's 12-inch Macbook launched in March 2015 (this product line has now disappeared), and Google's Chromebook Pixel 2015 released in March 2015.

However, in the field of smartphones, the first to support the Type-C interface was the LeTV Super Phone, which was launched in April 2015.

Since then, in addition to smartphones, tablets, laptops and other devices, many manufacturers have also launched a series of other devices along with the popularity of Type-C interfaces, such as desktop motherboards, USB PD chargers, U disks, mobile hard drives, mobile power supplies, car chargers, cables, headphones, sports cameras and many other devices.

Relatively speaking, among many electronic devices, smartphones have embraced the Type-C interface more quickly. Since the second half of 2015, almost all Android manufacturers have adopted the Type-C interface in their high-end smartphones.

However, in subsequent product strategies, some Android manufacturers often use the Type-C interface as an important product attribute to distinguish high-end and low-end smartphone products - often using the older Micro-B interface on entry-level or low-end phones.

In addition, Apple's embrace of the Type-C interface is also quite eye-catching. In addition to being the first to use Type-C in the 12-inch MacBook notebook, Apple later launched a new generation of MacBook Pro in 2016 and replaced all the interfaces with Type-C; in 2018, Apple introduced Type-C in the new generation of MacBook Air - since then, all MacBooks have used Type-C interfaces.

On the new iPad Pro launched in 2018, Apple also replaced the previous Lightning interface with Type-C, thereby highlighting the productivity attributes of the new iPad Pro.

Unlike Apple, Microsoft, another important player in the productivity field, has been slow to introduce Type-C in its Surface Pro; but at the New York conference in October this year, Microsoft finally configured a Type-C interface in its latest Surface Pro 7.

At the same time, the Surface Pro X and Surface Laptop 3 released together are also equipped with Type-C.

Summarize

It is worth mentioning that although the USB Type-C interface is based on the USB 3.1 standard, in actual industry applications, many manufacturers choose to use the Type-C interface even when the USB 3.1 standard is not available. In this way, although the transmission speed and charging efficiency fail to meet the requirements of the USB 3.1 standard, they can enjoy the convenience of the USB Type-C interface style.

In other words, as a new interface, USB Type-C has also achieved backward compatibility as it becomes more popular.

Judging from the development process of Type-C, the birth and popularization of a technical standard obviously require the promotion of the entire industry and the gradual acceptance of the market, and it cannot be achieved overnight.

For Type-C, it took five years from the formal establishment of the standard to its current recognition by the entire industry.

And five years have proved and will continue to prove that Type-C is the right interface direction - after all, in the latest generation of USB4 standards, Type-C has become the only supported interface.

Finally, welcome to the era of Type-C interface.

Keywords：USB Reference address：A brief history of USB Type-C

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