Why are modern USB cables able to put through more data in the same form factor? Why are some micro USB cables power only, while others can carry data? How is USB-C able to transfer such a large amount of both power and data?
How are we able to do this now, but we weren’t in the past? What’s changed?
In: Technology
That is a lot to cover.
Data / Power only cables – To make them cheaper the power only cables do not have the wires for the data lines in them at all as power is sent on complete different wires then the data.
To the more data question. The new data standards use a number of things to make it faster. Data compression, faster signaling, and in more wires for data. As the 3.0 standard added them.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/7416o2/my_revised_usb_standards_chart_after_the_usb_32/
](https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/7416o2/my_revised_usb_standards_chart_after_the_usb_32/)
The physical size of connectors does not really tell you much about the speed of the connection.
Relevant is the number of cables inside and even more how data is transfered via the cables.
An classic micro USB cable has two cables inside that transfer power, and two cables that transfer data. If these data cables are missing, then this cable can only transfer power.
USB-C cables can have a lot more cables, to transfer additional data, and also allows to have cables with certain properties to reach higher data rates.
That what allows to have higher speeds of data transfer and additional things like display connection via USB-C (but that only sorks with USB-C cables that actually have all wires, many cheap ones just have cables for power and slow data).
USB c is much more complicated than the old Micro USb connections, and requires much more intelligent devices to properly allow for all features. All of this needed to be planned out in a universal and flexible way first, and then we needed cheap chips to easily support this things. That were advances in the last few years.
The original USB standard only included a single twisted pair of wire for data, with two conductors on each end of the cable. This was fine for 480 megabits per second one direction at a time, but couldn’t scale up much more with the existing standards for cable
The USB 3.0 standard supplemented that with an extra pair for each direction, allowing speeds of 5/10gigabits per second biditectionally. The downside is that for the Micro-usb, this required a different plug, which never gained widespread adoption outside a few devices like the Galaxy S5.
The USB-c connector throws in an (optional) extra set of bidirectional lanes (two pairs in each direction total), allowing a total of 10/20 gigabits per second in the USB protocol standards, but also allows for alternate protocols such as Displayport for video to use one or more of those pairs instead.
>Why are some micro USB cables power only, while others can carry data?
Cost. It’s annoying for the end user, but some manufactures will order cables without data pins if they’re being bundled in with a device that just needs a small amount of power over USB.
usb cables are like magic tubes for data and power. they’re way better now cause we got smarter tech. usb-c is like the superhero of cables. it can do everything. micro usb is confusing. if it’s power only it’s probably just lazy haha. we’ve just learned more about how to make things work better over time.
usb cables are like magic straws for electronics. they made em better so they can chug more info and power at once. micro usb can be tricky like a sneaky friend some just do power and some do both but it’s all in the wires man. usb-c is like the superhero of cables n’ it can do it all. past cables just weren’t built like this. technology got a glow up.
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