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Amazon.com Now Bans USB Type-C Cables That Aren't Up To Spec (google.com)
Google engineer, Benson Leung has been on a mission to get rid of USB Type-C cables that aren't compliant with Type-C 1.1 spec. He reminds us that these cables could potentially lead to damage. Over the past few months, he has reviewed over a dozen of USB Type-C cables on Amazon.com and concluded that the vast majority of them aren't compliant with the aforementioned standard. Now he reports: Amazon.com has just made a change to their "Prohibited listings" for Electronics. They've added the following line: Any USB-C (or USB Type-C) cable or adapter product that is not compliant with standard specifications issued by "USB Implementers Forum Inc." What does this mean? It means that cable manufacturers who sell poorly made or intentionally deceptive USB Type-C cables and adapters are banned from Amazon, officially. Really great news, but we all have to continue to be vigilant and call out any bad products we find on Amazon and other stores (both online and brick and mortar) as we find them.
Great news would be Amazon white-listing compliant cables, I have a hard time imaging El Cheapo Cables Inc. being overly concerned about a bullet point in the amazon ToS.
Slashdot bans postings that aren't up to spec. Like this one.
I guess we just need to buy the Amazon brand cables to be sure.
The better solution would be to get rid of the idiotic standard that requires the cables to have intelligence built in. Put it in the devices where it belongs.
They've got the old four-wire USB in there, plus a whole new set of wires for the faster USB. It's like they forgot what the S in USB means. IMHO they should just abandon that festering standard and switch to Ethernet cables: Dirt cheap, work every time.
Now Amazon needs to deal with their entire counterfeit sex toy problem. If you're not aware, never buy sex toys off Amazon. Most of their products are low quality, counterfeits of more respectable brands. Often they're unsafe or made to low standards. Most manufactures will stop selling to any store that uses Amazon.
Isn't the reason they woiuld be called USB type-C cables; that they meet the "spec" so to speak?
Still think USB cables are fun, kids?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Amazon has gotten better about such things. You no longer have to go through the foreign support people with the forms and scripts. They now have a direct contact for unsafe product issues:
I would add UL (underwriters laboratories) and several others. UL moves a bit slow and reactive instead of proactive, but they certainly are zealous about protecting their brand. Products with their mark, that test out unsafe, will be quickly dropped from Amazon and elsewhere.
Unfortunately, this doesn't help with all those 2GB USB flash drives from China, which are labeled and firmware hacked to appear to have 64+ gigabytes of usable space.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
What ever happened to consumer protection laws? A product saying it's compliant with the spec but isn't actually? That should get the importer in legal hot water, not just a dot point in a terms of service agreement.
Shit why don't Amazon go all out and say in their Terms of Service that product descriptions must not contain lies?
Now, it would be nice if Amazon banned usb cables that don't actually allow you to charge or connect your Android device to your computer. I've bought so many bum cables on Amazon, it's not funny.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Can't a compliant cable be made for $3 in China?
Although I have to wonder about a "spec" or "standard" that allows damage to core hardware if the fricking cable is bad.
Seriously? What about component failures in the cable as it ages?
Didn't the engineers think this through?
This brings me back to the Apple Mac stroke of genius non-standard DB9 serial port when you could short the Mac power supply to ground by plugging in a standard null-modem cable,
This is an important issue to me because I have devices that need good USB-C cables. If anyone else is in the same boat, here's a direct link to Benson Leung's reviews. Focus in on the 5-star ones and look for the value buys (if the product is still available):
https://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/...
One of these cheap cables wasn't wired correctly and when Benson connected it to a Pixel C to charge some device (Nexus Phone?), the Pixel was destroyed. Apparently during manufacture two wires in one of the connectors were switched.
One difference between older USB cables is that the Type C cables contain a 56 k ohm pull up resistor for current control purpose. Some of the out of spec USB C cables with at least one USB Type C plug - probably a USB Type A plug at the other end - have a lower valued resistor and can cause problems. The problem is that if a lower resistance is used with a power supply that can only provide 1 Amp instead of 3 Amps at 5 Volts, the power supply can be fried as it tries to deliver 3 Amps. This could be the case for powered USB ports on computers. I've read that Apple laptops with a Type A compatible connector cannot deliver 3 Amps (1 Amp?) and might be at risk of damage when using an out of spec USB Type C connector cable with the wrong resistor. Further more, these out of spec cables may not be cheap. For more information, check the linked page and scroll down a bit:
http://www.androidauthority.co...
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
I'm not seeing anything, anywhere about this incompatibility, other than problems caused by people using shitty connectors and people who don't know the correct wiring. 10G Base-T is a thing that exists, and uses RJ-45 connectors on 6A or 7 cables. It looks like it's less popular than SFP+, at least in dense installations.
Lighten up Francis.
The bottom line is if you are going to have a standard you have to have some way of keeping people from sticking your logo on it if they cannot meet the requirements. It's great this Google engineer took up the mantle of shaming bad products, but the problem is more widespread than mere cables.
The solution would be Trademark Law, perhaps combined with automated testing. The Trademark indicates the source of a product is licensed for use (without a fee or perhaps for a nominal fee that helps cover testing and enforcement) on cables that meet the standard, and if you use the mark on cables or advertising for cables that don't meet the standard you get sued by industry or your imports get held at customs. It would be cheaper than all the time even the industry experts waste dealing with bad cables.
In the meantime, people can sell something with a different name that means "doesn't quite meet the standard but good enough for printing."
Suposedly the charging standard allows for up to 100 watts over the same cable you're going to be shuffling many gigabits of data over.
5W at 20V. 100W of power for battery chargers, displays, sex toys, whatever. Yes, the bozo manufacturers have to be weeded out of this market before the bozo "sort by cheapest" shoppers burn everything down.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Yes you should. I would not however, even ignoring USB-C. A lot of systems have absolutely no current limiter between the PSU/Battery and that 5V pin, short of the PSU current limit itself or the voltage regulator they have producing 5V (which itself may blow and leave that port non-functional).
USB is wildly popular, but it is insanely weak on compliance. It has been out of control for a long time, but like so many things in the PC world it works "good enough" for most people, and is so cheap, that they just throw out the junk. I don't like this model, but I'm both American and a hardware engineer. On a global scale that makes me a spoiled brat who won't use anything that isn't perfect, and will pay "too much" for it.
What ever happened to Caveat Emptor? Don't buy a cable from El Cheapo Cables Inc. There's plenty of reputable brands to choose from.
You do realise do you that "El Cheapo Cables Inc" is a ficticious name being used as an example and that no electronics company would really call itself something that sounds cheap and nasty? So unless you are a pro or an enthusiast familiar with the business you will not know what the "plenty of reputable brands" are. And you cannot necessarily go by price as a company making rubbish might charge a higher price just because there are always people (like yourself?) who assume that a higher price means higher quality. There are so many factors in the final retail price of an item like a cable that the manufactured quality has little to do with it directly.
I recently bought some leads for a test meter. I eventually bought three sets before finding one of adequate quality (the other two sets I threw away). I had never heard of any of the brands on offer (I've never bought test leads before in my life), and the best set was in fact the cheapest.
That is why standards are needed - to stop the waste of time, resources and money.
How gracious of Amazon to stop selling something crappy it's been publicly shamed about selling. Now if only they would stop selling all the other counterfeit crap that they knowingly pass on. I went though an endless loop of ordering an OEM battery for my SGS4 and returning because it was counterfeit. Each time I complained to an Amazon rep and they would agree that what they sent me must have somehow been counterfeit. Repeated complaints got broken promises to "investigate". http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-...
Surprisingly, other manufacturers also faced the same problems and came up with an easy, effective and cheaper solution: just build protections against shorts/over-current/over-voltage in your ports, upto a reasonable safety margin. So now my 10 year old HP desktop will show a discreet notification "The USB device on port 2 was drawing too much current and has been shut down." while the newest Macbook fries itself. Brilliant.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
The trouble is no cable manufacturer is really a household name, people assume Amazon does due diligence and things that are listed on their site are as described.
As Amazon allows random people to trade on their name by selling junk, Amazon risks being viewed as ebay is, a quagmire of garbage.
So how am I, an end user, supposed to tell what is a good or bad cable, or charger, etc.?
I see mention/discussions of A to C cables, C to C cables, C devices being A's internally, etc., and I really don't know what I'm seeing.
I'm assuming that "A" is the old, large connector that I have on my computer or disk drive, B is the smaller one typically on cameras, and C is the tiny one on cell phones and tablets.
I know that my phone will sometimes tell me "This cable is not recommended for this device", without any explanation why, if I'm not using the company's cable.
I understand (or think I understand) that the spec calls for delivering 5A of power to a device, at different voltage levels based on what the device can handle, with 100 to 500 watts being available over normal ports/hubs (and direct connections to a computer able to get more than that).
But ... how can I tell what's a good/proper device/cable/procedure?
What makes some cables/chargers good and others not?