smartphone makers to use just one type of charger
- Thread starter ron22
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poadeleted21
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Wow, for a second there I thought our government was the only one capable of doing something this moronic.
simtech
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hahaha just off the title my first thought was all smartphone makers are using the same, micro usb. Because the iphone..well... So then I read it and saw where it said apple would be hit the hardest. Yeah and apple changes there chargers almost yearly too, or earlier. My ipad 3rd generation has the long plug on it. 4 months later the 3rd gen had the square plug. really apple!!!! I like my ipad but I'll never own an iphone, actually my next tablet will likely be a Samsung. Then my phone and tablet charger will be the same.
DaleB
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Nearly everything in the house now used micro USB for charging. It really ****ed me off to have to buy a replacement cable for the Fuji camera -- which uses USB, but with a stupid proprietary connector. I have actually made decisions not to buy something just because it used an oddball connector.
PW_Plack
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We're almost there in the US without the regulation. Many chargers (including Apple's) now have a standard, large USB port on the wall-wart, and use a cable with that on one end and the phone's proprietary connector on the other. I can charge my Motorola Droid from most USB wall-warts, including the little white ones that come with iPhones, as long as I have the Motorola cable.
I worked a while back for a company with close ties to the cellphone industry, and we got intel that some manufacturers were planning to make the wall chargers optional, since so many people already have a drawer full of orphaned 5 VDC USB wall-warts.
The new EU regulation will punish innovators who come up with better battery and charger technology that uses anything but a 5 VDC source. Current single-cell lithium packs common in cellphones today are about 4 volts at full charge, so they can be charged from a 5 volt USB port. But what if the next great battery technology requires charging at more than 5 volts?
I worked a while back for a company with close ties to the cellphone industry, and we got intel that some manufacturers were planning to make the wall chargers optional, since so many people already have a drawer full of orphaned 5 VDC USB wall-warts.
The new EU regulation will punish innovators who come up with better battery and charger technology that uses anything but a 5 VDC source. Current single-cell lithium packs common in cellphones today are about 4 volts at full charge, so they can be charged from a 5 volt USB port. But what if the next great battery technology requires charging at more than 5 volts?
docmirror
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Personally I like a "standard" I do not like that they are mandating it.
The problem is Apple uses the port for more then charging. Well that and they want to control everything
Samsung micro-USB is avail for file xfers, as well as streaming if the player supports the android widget. Maybe the bandwidth isn't as big but it works, cause I do it all the time.
My wife was interested in one of the iPad products and we looked at just the cable to drive a SVGA monitor. $49. For a 6" piece of cable with two connectors. Jeez.
ron22
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With USB you can do all USB transfers what ever the phone will let you do over USB.
Apples old 30 pin connector also had audio & video out. So you could "dock" it on speakers without having to plug into the audio/headset jack. They made it a true docking plug. Apples new 9 pin does not have this.
SkyHog
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Everything Offends Me
My last 3 android devices have docked audio through USB also.
DaleB
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EDIT: I didn't think this was correct, but then discovered and I read up on CEA-936-A. I guess you can get analog audio out through some Micro-USB ports. Live and learn.
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SkyHog
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Everything Offends Me
Is it possible to send data to a pair of headphones? I figured it had to be analog since there was no obvious electronics or anything. Also I had a car dock that took the USB out and on the other end had a 1/8" jack to plug into my audio input in my car. It looked like it was just a cable.
If data can be converted that way, my world just spun a bit!
DaleB
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No, and I found that out after composing my first crack at the reply -- check my edited reply. You wuz right, I wuz wrong.
SkyHog
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I see your edit. Crazy stuff man. Funny thing is that is one of the main arguments for the Lightning connector.
ARFlyer
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Old Ti calculators were updated via a 1/8" jack. It's still uses electrical signals to send the data. The only difference is that it's round and not flat. Old computer systems used round jacks to transfer data.
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JGoodish
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Personally I like a "standard" I do not like that they are mandating it.
The problem is Apple uses the port for more then charging. Well that and they want to control everything
Apple has a good reason (other than revenue) for their desire to "control everything." I would love to be able to carry one charger and one cord for all of my mobile devices, but I've never been able to do that, even before smartphones. I still have late-model Samsung and Nokia flip phones, both with micro-USB ports for charging, that will not charge using the same charger or even an industry-standard charger. At least my Apple devices will charge off of numerous different USB inputs, I just have to use different cords depending on whether the device uses Apple's 30 pin connector or the newer connector.
I think that it portends badly for everyone when the government decides that the minor inconveniences of our modern privileged lifestyle are worthy of regulation.
JKG
You can send data (slowly) by the headphone/mic jack. This is how things like the SQUARE card reader work.
I don't know how it works, but my car gets audio sync via the USB plug and my iPhone, perhaps it's just sending it digitally across but it works.
SkyHog
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Looking to confirm the other way around though - data sent to a 1/8 jack, but converted to analog audio without a chipset or anything.
us AAirways
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dukeblue219
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Apple has changed their connector once in the last 12 years.
And no, I'm not an Apple fanatic, either.
DaleB
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Nope.
In the USB to audio setup, a resistor in the cable or adapter indicates to the device that it should switch the use of the USB connector to analog audio instead of USB data. So, when you plug in your headset you do indeed get analog audio. There's no way for your standard audio headphones with a 2.5 or 3.5 mm audio plug to use data from the USB connector.
For this to work, the phone or other device has to have hardware and software support for the CEA-936-A standard. Then it can switch between USB data, audio or a couple of different charging standards using the same USB connector. I didn't dig deep enough to see how the charging standards differ.
It's a pretty slick little standard, and will let you design a product with one less expensive, failure-prone connector.
Now, having said that... the world is full of devices that have used round audio plugs (1/4", 1/8", 2.5mm; mono, stereo and 4-conductor) for both audio and data. Yaesu does it on their handhelds, as do several other manufacturers. Usually you get either audio, or serial data - depending on the mode you're in. And as mentioned before, TI used a 3.5mm plug for data transfer for a long time, probably because it was smaller and cheaper than anything else. Some use actual serial TTL, CMOS or RS232 level data; a few use AFSK audio like a modem.
Even the headphones and headsets you see with USB connectors are not really converting data to sound directly. They are USB sound devices that connect to your PC as such, take USB digital data packets and convert them to sound with a CPU and DAC and numerous layers of software. It wouldn't surprise me to see one with an adapter and some way to bypass all the USB stuff and plug them into your MP3 player, but none of the ones I have seen had such adapter.
simtech
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Meh....I have two apple products and they are both different and bought them a year apart. That constitutes a change every year for me
. 
flyingcheesehead
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Meh....I have two apple products and they are both different and bought them a year apart. That constitutes a change every year for me
No, it just means you have bad timing.
But yeah, Apple used the same connector from the first time there was a dock connector on the iPod until maybe a year and a half ago with the introduction of the iPhone 5 and iPad "4" with the "Lightning" connector.
IIRC, they've used exactly 4 different connectors for their laptops since the late 80's. Big coax, smaller coax when they started making the laptops smaller, MagSafe (best power adapter invention ever IMO), and now MagSafe 2 because their laptops are so insanely thin now that the 1/4" or so thick MagSafe was too thick! There's an adapter from the MagSafe to the MagSafe 2 to let you use older adapters with newer computers, it costs about 2 bucks (and I'm plugged into one right now).
flyingcheesehead
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Yes it does... Else it'd be awfully difficult for things like the Lightning->HDMI adapter to work. And I can tell you that it definitely supports audio, I have a 30-pin to Lightning adapter and I can still use the speakers to play music from the iPhone 5s without plugging anything into its headphone jack.
ron22
Cleared for Takeoff
I did not say you could not get audio or video out. I said "had audio & video out"
With a audio output is it very easy to make a speaker dock. Just need speakers and a small amp. With new lightning or a USB connector my speaker dock need a little more electronics to decode the information
30 pinout
Code:
1 GND Ground
2 Audio & Video Ground
3 Right Out Line Out RIght Ch.
4 Left Out Line Out Left Ch.
5 Right In Line In Right Ch.
6 Left In Line In Left Ch.
7 Video Ground
8 Composite Video Out When slideshow active on iPod Photo
Component Video Pb
9 S-Video Chrominance Out For iPod Color, Photo Only
Component Video Y
10 S-Video Luminance Out For iPod Color, Photo Only
Component Video Pr
11 AUDIO_SW If connected to GND the iPhone sends audio signals through pin 3-4
GND Serial Ground
12 TX Serial TxD (device sending)
13 Rx Serial RxD (device receiving)
14 n.c. Reserved
15 GND Ground
16 USB GND
17 n.c. Reserved
18 3.3 V 3.3 V Power (*)
19 +12V Firewire Power +12 VDC
20
21 Accessory Indicator Resistor to Ground (**)
Serial enable
22 TPA - Firewire Data TPA -
23 +5 V USB power +5 VDC
24 TPA + Firewire Data TPA +
25 Data - USB Data - (***)
26 TPB - Firewire Data TPB -
27 Data + USB Data + (***)
28 TPB + Firewire Data TPB +
29 GND Firewire Ground
30 GND
Code:
1 GND ground
2 L0p lane 0 positive
3 L0n lane 0 negative
4 ID0 identification/control 0
5 PWR power (charger or battery)
6 L1n lane 1 negative
7 L1p lane 1 positive
8 ID1 identification/control