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
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.
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