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Why Don't PDAs and Cellphones Use USB?
evolutionaryLawyer asks: "I have a RazrV3 phone and the charging interface is USB. This means if my cell phone is dying I get to pull a USB cable out of my bag, plug it into my laptop and charge it wherever I am, and at the same time data transfer is possible. This got me to thinking, why do all these cellphones, PDAs, and other devices use funky data and power interfaces when USB 2.0 is capable of providing both data and power in a universal format? I cannot think it is to sell cables, because I am sure they lose a lot of that to 3rd parties, not to mention that it has to be more expensive to design and manufacture these proprietary formats. Look at the PSP, it has both a power port, and a USB 2.0 port. Why shouldn't they cut out one?" While such a question is better asked of the cell phone manufacturers, it is unlikely that the average consumer would be able to get a straight answer. Can you think of plausible reasons as to why companies might be bypassing usable standards for their own proprietary cables, especially given the fact that there are third-party cables out there for just about every make and model of PDA or cellphone?
I would think it's because there are power outlets in just about every building, but not USB ports.
"pr0n": An anagram of "porn," possibly indicating the use of pornography. - www.microsoft.com
they dont like their 'connectors' to be like anyone elses...
"this is the gloaming"
radiohead
By not putting standard interfaces on, people are forced to pay for ringtones, where if they had USB, they could just drag a MIDI right to the phone.
Nothing for you to see here, Please move along.
Most phones also also have an rs-232 serial connection and some of the other pins are used for the initial programming (data lines to the eeprom?). If the phone just needed power and usb, I would agree that the proprietary connector should be avoided.
Ever seen what they charge for their sync cable? Surely they'll miss their 30$ and 40$ if you can get a plain old usb cable for 1$....
---- Fear the mighty TsEA
People just LOVE camera phones these days, and by not putting standard connectors on, consumers are forced to pay outrageous prices for data servece, where if they had a USB cable, they could just mount it as a drive and drag the JPEGs right off the phone.
Companies goals are to make money, not please the customer.
Nothing for you to see here, Please move along.
Basic and simple answer, USB adds complexity. If the phone had only a USB plug, it would have to be a USB host to be able to allow things like corded headsets and such to attach. Then the headsets would have to be more complex, going from somethign that just passes analog data over the right pins on the connector to a full digital headset.
Power wise, USB really can't do more then 500mA of power at 5V. This is fine for cell phones like my T610 that get 450mA from the official charger at 4.7V. But for devices like the PSP, it would mean 4 times as long to charge, as the PSP power adaptor pushes out 2A or power at 5V.
A: Because they can? Regardless, Sony would have a weird proprietary version within a month of the rest of the industry picking a standard. They'd call it Secure Sync (R), and charge you $85 for the privilege of not being to upload MP3s.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
It's 500mW max iirc, which is enough to keep most portable devices running, but would make charging really slow.
If they were to go to a standard connection Firewire might be nice at 12-60Wats.
But in the mean time, they'll generally use custom connectors for charging.
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
From http://www.usb.org/developers/usbfaq/#pow1
1. How much power does a system in S3 need to supply to USB?
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A: 500mA per USB port. See section 7.2.3 for the details of device behavior during suspend and resume.
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Presumably this has something to do with it. HTH. HAND.
Camera phone? Take all the photos you like, but it's X cents per photo to get them of your phone. Address book backup? Sure, it's only X dollars a month for automatic backups! Want games on your Java enabled phone? Sure, we have a selection here for $4.99 per game per month (sorry, you can only select from this menu). Want some GREW games? We have those too (sorry, you can't code your own, BREW is proprietary).
Handset manufacturers would love to put these features in for users, but they don't because then the cell phone companies won't sell the phones and wont support them if purchesed through other channels.
jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
I also have a V3, and its USB power can only be used to "top off" an already existing charge. if you ever get the phone to a dead state, a USB port is useless. The usb charging doesnt begin until the software in the phone requests power from the port.
another problem, is that to charge a dead phone you need a motorola(TM) razr(TM) usb charger, which arent very redily available yet.
another problem is that a USB port cant provide enough juice to both charge the phone, and make a call. if you talk on USB power, your phone will eventually go into a totally dead state (see above for how fun that is).
yet another problem, is that file transfer over USB isnt possible (it might be with additional software). I can exchange ringtones and pictures only via bluetooth, and can sync a phone book only with USB. totally wierd.
Cell phone companies sell the phones to cellular carriers, who resell them at a loss (at best breakeven on a cheap phone). Perhaps at the beginning of life on an exclusive hot phone the carrier might make some money, but most phones are sold at less than the company paid for it. Accessories (and contract replacement phones are sold at a huge markup (>50% or more) to offset some of the initial loss on the phone. If the end user can buy cheap accessories for their new phone from a third party, the cellular company is out even more, hense the non standard connectors.
If you don't believe me, go find one of Nextel's SEC filings such as this one, go to page 54 and do the math yourself. Nextel paid $2.0 billion for handsets and accessories in 2004, and sold them for $1.4 billion. (The second line relates to an accounting gimmick Nextel previously used to minimize this cost). The three following explanatory paragraphs explain that the handsets are subsidized, but accessories are sold with gross margin (not subsidized).
Nextel's subsidies might be larger than other phone companies (due to only a single supplier), but all of them sell phones at a loss.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Probably the biggest reason why cel phone makers etc use their own cables, at least the wall wart for charging, is to ensure that the power coming into the phone is exactly right.
By supplying a proprietary charger they can know that you won't accidentally damage the phone.
I've never checked, but I'd wager that the power on a USB port can have a lot of variation, especially if you're using a cheapo $6.99 USB hub from Big Lots.
Three Squirrels
It doesn't work like that - just because it has a USB plug doesn't mean that you automatically have access to every piece of memory on the phone. Same goes for Bluetooth. My phone has bluetooth but I can't download th pictures with it, I can't upload ringtones or wallpapers. It doesn't matter what the plug is, they can lock off the device however they want.
"The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his." - Patton
Hey,
Not even a cradle on the 7100 series. Uses a regular USB cable (rectangular plug to the micro plug). Same cable I use to connect to my Sony digital camera. It syncs and charges over it. Even the wall charger is a USB cable with a transformer on the end. It is quite nice to charge off the computer this way.
I do wish it had a cradle, as the plugging and unplugging is a little annoying (the plug is on the left side of the unit). Great for portability though.
-m
http://www.invisik.com
It's more complicated to use USB power as you're supposed to tell the hub how much power you're going to draw before suddenly trying to suck down anything.
The current USB charger cables out there are just a bit of wire with a USB plug on one end and whatever plug you need at the other end. It assumes that the laptop/computer will always supply power and be capable of supplying everything it needs. If you plug in your T68i on a bus powered hub then you'll get some interesting problems.
Could it be because a female USB port is to plug devices into, and that any device plugged into such can demand up to 500ma of power from the device with the port?
Sure as the sun will rise tomorrow, you'd have Cletus trying to plug his USB 2.0 camcorder into the cell phone, and ruining either or both of the devices.
Plugging a cell phone into a USB port is ok, plugging *almost anything else* into a cell phone's USB port is a recipe for disaster.
Excepting cellphones, most devices I see use a readily available round power connector. The transformer is clearly marked with the polarity and electricial info. One can just measure the size and hit up any electronics supplier and find a matching connector.
I can also see it as protection, if you can physically connect up a USB-power only cable to something that isnt expecting power on its USB port then someone will do so and destroy it.
Why not use USB? Because fucktards designed the USB jack to be rectangular, and you have to look up its ass everytime to figure out which side that little plastic spacer is on. That's crappy and prone to breakage.
(sweetly:) Next question please?
I have a cable for my Treo 650 that will allow it to charge via USB. This is both a cell phone and a PDA. This is also, by no means, the only cell phone or PDA that can be changed via USB. You just need to get the right cable.
I would not want to wait to charge my Treo via USB, though. It takes forever! I forget what wattage the USB port is limited to, but it's far less than the real charger for my Treo.
Not as common on larger devices, but it is found increasingly in small devices like digital cameras.
most portable devices that have detachable cables at the slave device end (cameras, cellphones) will use a miniature usb connection to make sure you don't screw up the cable alignment, and to make the plug smaller on the device that's portable and can't afford space. on the mater/host side, it has to support the standard large USB plugs.
The USB/regular power plug on the motorola is quite tiny, just as it needs to be, for a phone like this. Most cell phones have a plug that is much larger than this because they useproprietary data lines and connection methods to the phone. My other two phones have plugs that are at least 4x as wide a the single plug available on the razr.
I hold up the other end of a typical USB cable as an example of a good design. I haven't found any way to screw that up yet.
There are problems with USB 2 when it comes to power. What do you get, 5v, 500ma? Not enough to do much with. True, there are devices as large as flatbed scanners that can run entirely off this power, but it's not much.
If you try to come up with USB 3, however, and specify that it should supply more power, the problem will be that maybe the computer can't supply that much due to its power supply and requirements, etc. Which brings me to the next point: USB 3 should have some sort of specification that says a computer can decide how much power to supply through USB, based on factors like its own power usage. Then, when you plug in a device, it would automatically figure out if it has enough power or not, and perhaps a message could pop up on the computer, telling you that you're trying to overload the USB power supply.
Of course, then you'd have to take into consideration the gauge and insulation of the USB wire itself, and you'll end up with the need to put a tiny chip into compatible wires which would tell the computer what the max current carrying capacity of that cable is rated at. This all sounds quite complicated, but there's no reason why a computer can't push more power out of a USB port if all these things are taken into consideration, and all the proper power handshaking takes place from the USB port down the chain (if there are hubs, etc. in the way) all the way to individual devices. Also, you're probably not using all devices in max-power-usage mode at the same time, so the devices might talk to each other and enter power-save mode when necessary to allow other devices to be used.
This seems, again, like a very complicated solution looking for a problem, but it shouldn't be too difficult to do for next-generation USB devices, and the advantages are pretty big: Right here on my desk, I have a 6-outlet strip that isn't enough. Currently plugged in are my laptop, Mac Mini, 17" display, ethernet hub, and printer; These are just the computer peripherals. I also have, in the same area, a phone charger, small television, desk lamp, and DVD player. I need a USB hub for the Mac Mini because there simply aren't enough ports on it for all the crap I'd like to have plugged in at one time; therefore, I have so far refrained from buying a USB hub. There are not enough outlets on this wall to handle all of this. If I add another strip, I'll probably blow a fuse if all of this is on at the same time. A new USB protocol which takes into consideration a whole range of power options, negotiated in real-time by the devices themselves as they are plugged in, used, and removed, and taking into consideration the power-supplying capability of the computer, the capacity of the wires themselves, and the usage of the devices, really offers an opportunity to remove many plugs from many devices that would otherwise need them, and to greatly reduce the number of wires running across and under many desks; This would require more careful engineering by already-overworked electronics engineers who are concerned about power consumption, but I believe that with added innovation, increased customer demand for this kind of service, and the advances made each day in semiconductors, this will provide so much value for the consumer that it's worth it.
I wanted to be able to transfer data off of my cell phone. I also wanted to be able to add my own ring tones.
I found a phone that let me do this. I got the MPX220 smart phone. This phone connects through USB both for charging and data tranfer. I just plug in and drag an mp3 or midi to the phone and I have a new ring tone. My phone also plays music. I have minor complaints about some of the software but overall I'm very happy with this phone.
Stop whinning about your phone. Get a better one. Phone you want is out there. If you look around you can even get phones like this free with a two year contract.
The RazrV3 is for people who want style more than functionality.
The restrictions on phones over in the US is ridiculous. I got an NEC e616 flipphone in February with all the goodies (dual video cameras, mp3, video calls, 3G network @ 384Kbps) for just under $200 Aust with 3 Mobile. It includes a USB cable and there are no file restrictions on this phone other than content bought through the 3 services (music videos, etc) cannot be copied or moved. And the calendar automatically synchronises over the 3G internet connection with my PC. American mobile carriers are an absolute joke, simple as that.