Take electric tools. If I have a Milwaukee setup (lawn mower,leaf blower etc) and I buy a new drill. If I want to use the batteries I currently have I’ll have to get a Milwaukee drill.
Yes this is good business, but not all industries do this. Why?
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Consider the use case. How many people will be carrying their cordless Milwaukee drill in a bus or train, stuff it in their bags and use it at all times of day in various locations?
Then there is the network effect. The industry got together a long time ago because they understood that interoperability was necessary to reduce development time and cost and to enhance communications between devices.
No third party was going to develop specialized keyboards, mice, accessories etc if every single accessory had to be designed with a specific PC manufacturer. Remember that USB standard originated in the PC world not the phone world and likely predates smart phones by a decade.
Once the hardware and software protocols were developed, it was simply easier for the earlier phone manufacturers to piggy back the existing standards and extend it for use in phones. Remember that the original USB power lines were mostly meant to deliver power to accessories and not designed to charge batteries.
Bottom line is that most of the cordless tool manufacturers never had much incentive to collaborate with each other to make a universal standard.
>ELI5: How did USB-C become the universal charging port for phones?
Through a number of factors. USB-C has decent power delivery, data transfer rates, etc. There were some regulations about charging ports too, some recently. USB-C was relatively ubiquitous which made it attractive. It cuts down on costs to use an already established specification.
Note that Apple has been using their own proprietary port for a long time and just now switched to USB type C. Their lightning port had advantages over micro usb that was used prior to type C.
>Yes this is good business, but not all industries do this. Why?
It’s not always good business. You can google format wars for betamax vs VHS. Compact disc came as a joint specification to avoid a format war like that.
Some standards/specs may be mandated by law. At other times, it’s actually industry associations deciding a common specification is in the best interest of everyone (you sell more products, it cuts down on design costs, etc.). There are times too when a market sector just standardizes to one spec over time due to it being better. See Blu-Ray vs HD DVD or what’s happening with charging plugs for electric cars.
You’re not necessarily comparing apples with apples here.
The battery from one phone will almost certainly not fit in another phone.
The charger for your Milwaukee will plug into the same socket as your neighbour’s Dewalt. If the charger has a removable cable, it’d almost certainly be a (standard) figure-8 connector.
Pretty much every electrical appliance with a removable cord I own uses one of three plugs (the “jug cord”, figure-8, or clover-leaf). As soon as that AC power is converted to DC, all bets are off.
Universal ideology’s are common when it makes sense or law has dictated that it be common ie IEC connectors, fig 8 connectors, USB-C etc. but if you take a look at apples choices over the years, while inconvenient, they have always been in the bid for better performance or space saving (FireWire 400 and 800, Mini DVI and Thunderbolt etc). And in the case of proprietary batteries, it’s just a way of ensuring a consumer buys more from the brand and makes it more sensible to continue to buy their products. Also better brands have better battery packs with better power management that ensures the battery lasts longer.
This is not new. People forget at the start of the mobile phone age that every brand had its own proprietary connector for headphones and microphone and that sometimes even used to vary from model to model. It took quite a long time for the headphone jack to make its appearance (10 years at a guess) and even longer for USB to make its entrance. It’s taken us a LONG time to get to the standardised USB-C connector. It could be argued that apples 30-pin and lightning were one of the more stable formats as they covered a lot of device models (iPhones, iPads and iPods).
It happened because the EU made it happen. Go back 15 years, and every phone had a different charger. If you got a new phone, all your old chargers would become obsolete and end up in drawers or landfills. The EU first pushed for all phone makers to adopt micro USB. The plan was voluntary. The EU didn’t mandate it. Most manufacturers went along. Some (mainly apple) did not.
Later USB-C came along and the EU encouraged that. Everyone but apple went along.
Finally in 2022, the EU passed a law making USB-C mandatory. The law takes effect this year.
https://www.macrumors.com/guide/eu-charging-standard-proposals-and-apple/
There comes a point when market volume and interoperability is more valuable than specificity.
Usb-c has reached the point where just about every device can be charged with that port. It has the benefit of universal design across both power and data bandwidth, which means it’s simpler amd cheaper to design for. And because it touches so many tech related areas of personal and business computing across the world, reaching a universal system became almost a requirement.
Apple held out with its iPhone charging port for years to keep people reliant on its ecosystem. But the sheer number of competitors in the smartphone and tablet space using usb-c ports capable of both power and data transfer means it’s a lot simpler to replace a missing charger or cable with an equal yet generic brand. Restricting the iPhone to the lightning port for so long was only possible due to the market share iPhone enjoyed. These days that share has shrunk enough that while it may still be the biggest slice of the pie, it’s no longer more than it’s next two competitors, and they knew the charging port was part of this.
With USB-C becoming the minimum acceptable standard globally, both technologically and in places legislatively, it makes sense that Apple would see it as a cost saving move to go to USB. This gives them back a bit of compatibility with other tech, and saves them money from not having to make lightning chargers any more.
Other industries like power tools simply don’t have the same market size and interoperability requirements as phones and tablet computers.
But you do see it in international industries such as home entertainment (eg DVD and bluray) and medical tech
Standardization is more common than most people notice, but less common than it should be. Usb-c is just an example of standardization done well
It is hard to get companies to work together much less adopt a standard. It has to be something that benefits the company that is adopting the standard. Making a standard benefit anyone other than consumers is hard.
As a consumer I like the uniformity of the charging and such things. But as a fan of free market and innovation, let companies do whatever they want. In the case of apple, it’s just a charging port conformity. It’s not like it has dangerous or illegal parts or was a ton less efficient or “green” to have a lightning vs usb-c port. Let consumers decide what they want. I don’t think the charging port was the biggest factor when choosing a phone
Batteries in cordless tools is a bit different. You could say the charing “port” – the wall outlet – is standardized. You can just remove the battery whereas in a phone you can’t. But that’s notnquite right, and not the real story.
For things like drills, it goes beyond that. Electronics all work on similar voltages. Sp phones and such, not a big deal.
But appliances, the designers may want a different tradeoff on power-pack voltage (i.e, 18v, 24v, etc.) than another design or limits their selection of motors. Because they focus on a different application, or they just think their way performs better for their customers. Then there is the form factor they go for, which might be incompatible with a different battery pack. Maybe a high end brand wants to go with a high voltage pack, because they can get a smaller motor, smaller battery pack, and faster charing time, but at higher cost. But if theyvare forced to use a lower voltage pack, can’t do it.
Forcing every tool designer to use the same battery pack is closer to forcing every vehicle to use the same engine than it is to having all electronics using the same charger port.
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