The phone and micro USB charging standard has been working pretty well. But it is starting to show signs of breaking down. Most phones and tablets want more than the 5 watts of power the USB standard is supplying. So they do things like increase the voltage from 5V to 9V after the phone negotiates a little with the charger. If the negotiation does not take place then the phone charges slower using the 5V 1Amp standard for USB.
Have an LG-G4 Smarter than me phone.
Charging off my desktop = x time.
Charging with the little charger wall wart they provided, charges 5-6 times faster. Maybe even more, never put a stop watch to it.
Then I guess our HP tech rep is incorrect. All of our laptops come with two power bricks, with identical power supply plugs. The heavy duty brick powers the laptop through the docking station while the standard power brick powers just the laptop (for traveling). The heavy duty brick can be used to just power the laptop itself. When we asked why there are different plugs for different HP models we were told so we have to buy the specific power supplies for the specific laptops and cannot inter-mix them. It’s marketing and planned obsolescence.
The 2013 proposed (European) standard was to eliminate all of this but the technology wasn’t there yet. That came about in 2014 with the small USB power supplies integrated into the power plug. The integrated USB power buttons only appear for smartphone and tablets because laptop manufacturers don’t want interchangeable power supplies. They would lose money on all the additional power brick purchases customers buy because they keeping forgetting to carry their power bricks with them (or losing them).
I’m very opposed to this type of bureaucratic meddling in technology. It does little but slow down improvements. What it means is that a forward-thinking manufacturer is prevented from using a superior charger interface (smaller, lighter, faster, more intelligent) because some committee decided having a least-common-denominator solution is better. Hence: Brexit.
ETA: And yes, I suspect the HP rep is incorrect. Ask the Engineers for each product why they did it the way they did. You will find answers like “cost” or “we had a lot of those chargers in a warehouse.”
This explains some of it for me. Still, it seems that there are grounds for standardizing power supplies delivering x amps at y voltage. Imagine how we take for granted our 120 V 60 HZ AC current and the chaos which would ensue if THAT varied.
It’s out in the wild and should be the solution to this problem. USB-C includes 100 watts power as an option and is already shipping on Apple’s Macbook’s released earlier this year and is expected to be used on the new MacBook Pro’s that Apple is announcing today. Hopefully in 3 or 4 years time all laptop manufacturers will be using USB-C for power and the problem goes away.
Incidentally there is a real chance that USB-C / Thunderbolt 3 will become the “one port to rule them all”. USB-C and TB3 use the same physical port, TB3 ports have an additional chip allowing higher speeds but can also function as a USB-C port. Literally everything from mice, to HD to video displays to power can be done through USB-C and its a simple cable (not even a dongle) to connect to USB3.1 or earlier devices. The new Macbook Pro is rumored to have four USB-C / TB3 ports and thats it, everything will be done through them. Bring it on!
Well, charger bricks can work with both types of AC (120@60 and 220/230@50) without the user needing to switch it beforehand, nowadays - a lot of appliances do, in fact.