January 1, 2025, is the date for mobile phones and other small electronic devices. Saudi Arabia announced a law to standardize charging ports for all...
I’d be surprised if USB-C was a limitation on phone technology even by 2040. The bandwidth and power delivery capacity are way beyond what are needed now. Data transfers from phones are going to increasingly move to wireless in that time frame too, I expect.
The limitation on the viability of USB-C with phones won’t be the actual technological viability of the standard with respect to phones. Instead, the problem for USB-C for phones will be if another standard comes out and starts being used by other devices that do need higher bandwidth or power delivery capability. Monitors, storage devices, laptops (etc.) will eventually need more than USB-C can provide, even with future updates to its capacity. When those switch over to something new, that will be when phones (and other devices) will need to consider a new standard too.
This is speculation based on the combination of physical constraints and changing usage.
Phone batteries today are in the 10-20 watt-hours range for capacity, or at least iphones are and that’s the data I found. Going from the typical ~20W fast charging rate to the full 240W capacity of USB-C EPR would allow a twelve times increase in battery capacity with no change to charge times. Are batteries going to increase in capacity by twelve times in the next 17 years? I’d be shocked if they did. The change from the iphone 1 to the iphone 14 pro max is 5.18Wh to 16.68Wh — a three times increase in 16 years.
Likewise, with data transfer, it’s a matter of how human-device interaction has shifted with time. People increasingly prefer (a) automated, and (b) cloud based data storage, and (c) if they do have to move data from device 1 to device 2, they would rather do it wirelessly than with a physical connection. USB4 on USB-C is meant for 80 Gbit/s = 9.6 GB/s transfers. That’s already faster than high end SSD storage can sustain today, and USB4 is a four year old standard. People on phones are going to be far more likely to be worried about their wifi transfer speeds than their physical cable transfer speeds, especially in 2040.
Then, on top of all of that… USB will continue to be updated. USB-C’s limitations in 2033 will not be USB-C’s limitations in 2023, just as USB-C’s limitations in 2023 are not the same as USB-C’s limitations at its inception in 2014. In 2014 USB’s best transfer rate was 10 Gbit/s, or 1/8 what it can do today.
Usb 1.1 came out in like 1994, I still use it for keyboards and mice, ie the main thing I plug in to my pc. USB 2.0 came out around 1999, that covers most everything else.
Usb 3 is from 2009 or so, most of us don’t bother with them except for storage because they’re overspecced otherwise and usb 2 is cheaper.
Usb 4 will be fine in 2040 unless something weird happens, we’ll still be using usb 2.0 because the cables are cheaper and more flexible than 3.0, we’ll just call it “USBx4.2 base profile”
USB4 is actually faster than DisplayPort 2.1 and I don’t think we’ll go past 8k at 165Hz any time soon. When it comes to storage at some point you really want an SFP port currently maxing out at 400Gbit (as opposed to USB4 120Gbit, and that’s asymmetric). For reference: You need to drive the NIC with PCIe 5x16 to saturate that. Unidirectionally. Network speeds are nuts you need specialised hardware to keep up with the cables.
Why do mobile devices and computer hardware need to utilize the exact same wire? I am fine with their being two, as long as it doesn’t turn back into a half dozen types of cables again.
It’s convenience and efficiency. At the end of the day a single cable can provide that functionality needed for 99.9% of such devices. Getting everything on a single cable format reduces waste, simplifies people’s lives, and even opens up competitive spaces. There’s no need for it to be two cables.
But it’s already multiple cables. I have like 3 dozen cables, with more than a dozen being USB-C and only like 5 of them will fast charge my phone. This will get more absurd and confusing as it’s expanded over varying needs for power per device. I mean at least make some sort of easy cable label requirement.
Your word is the USB-IF’s ear. Though generally speaking there really is an enforcement problem when it comes to cables, sometimes cables don’t even meet basic USB specs much less high-speed high-power specs.
I’d be surprised if USB-C was a limitation on phone technology even by 2040. The bandwidth and power delivery capacity are way beyond what are needed now. Data transfers from phones are going to increasingly move to wireless in that time frame too, I expect.
The limitation on the viability of USB-C with phones won’t be the actual technological viability of the standard with respect to phones. Instead, the problem for USB-C for phones will be if another standard comes out and starts being used by other devices that do need higher bandwidth or power delivery capability. Monitors, storage devices, laptops (etc.) will eventually need more than USB-C can provide, even with future updates to its capacity. When those switch over to something new, that will be when phones (and other devices) will need to consider a new standard too.
Remember what we said and acted on 20 years ago about technology? Yeaaahh…That’s what you said right now.
This is speculation based on the combination of physical constraints and changing usage.
Phone batteries today are in the 10-20 watt-hours range for capacity, or at least iphones are and that’s the data I found. Going from the typical ~20W fast charging rate to the full 240W capacity of USB-C EPR would allow a twelve times increase in battery capacity with no change to charge times. Are batteries going to increase in capacity by twelve times in the next 17 years? I’d be shocked if they did. The change from the iphone 1 to the iphone 14 pro max is 5.18Wh to 16.68Wh — a three times increase in 16 years.
Likewise, with data transfer, it’s a matter of how human-device interaction has shifted with time. People increasingly prefer (a) automated, and (b) cloud based data storage, and (c) if they do have to move data from device 1 to device 2, they would rather do it wirelessly than with a physical connection. USB4 on USB-C is meant for 80 Gbit/s = 9.6 GB/s transfers. That’s already faster than high end SSD storage can sustain today, and USB4 is a four year old standard. People on phones are going to be far more likely to be worried about their wifi transfer speeds than their physical cable transfer speeds, especially in 2040.
Then, on top of all of that… USB will continue to be updated. USB-C’s limitations in 2033 will not be USB-C’s limitations in 2023, just as USB-C’s limitations in 2023 are not the same as USB-C’s limitations at its inception in 2014. In 2014 USB’s best transfer rate was 10 Gbit/s, or 1/8 what it can do today.
Usb 1.1 came out in like 1994, I still use it for keyboards and mice, ie the main thing I plug in to my pc. USB 2.0 came out around 1999, that covers most everything else.
Usb 3 is from 2009 or so, most of us don’t bother with them except for storage because they’re overspecced otherwise and usb 2 is cheaper.
Usb 4 will be fine in 2040 unless something weird happens, we’ll still be using usb 2.0 because the cables are cheaper and more flexible than 3.0, we’ll just call it “USBx4.2 base profile”
USB4 is actually faster than DisplayPort 2.1 and I don’t think we’ll go past 8k at 165Hz any time soon. When it comes to storage at some point you really want an SFP port currently maxing out at 400Gbit (as opposed to USB4 120Gbit, and that’s asymmetric). For reference: You need to drive the NIC with PCIe 5x16 to saturate that. Unidirectionally. Network speeds are nuts you need specialised hardware to keep up with the cables.
Laptops why yes that’s what USB is for.
Why do mobile devices and computer hardware need to utilize the exact same wire? I am fine with their being two, as long as it doesn’t turn back into a half dozen types of cables again.
It’s convenience and efficiency. At the end of the day a single cable can provide that functionality needed for 99.9% of such devices. Getting everything on a single cable format reduces waste, simplifies people’s lives, and even opens up competitive spaces. There’s no need for it to be two cables.
But it’s already multiple cables. I have like 3 dozen cables, with more than a dozen being USB-C and only like 5 of them will fast charge my phone. This will get more absurd and confusing as it’s expanded over varying needs for power per device. I mean at least make some sort of easy cable label requirement.
Your word is the USB-IF’s ear. Though generally speaking there really is an enforcement problem when it comes to cables, sometimes cables don’t even meet basic USB specs much less high-speed high-power specs.