alt Hacker NewsIt's more complicated than "this cable is good/bad". I had a suspicion about one of my cables for months, but just last week I confirmed it with a device that shows the volts/amps/watts/total kwh passing through it: I have a USB-C cable with orientation. Plugged in one way it transfers about 5x more power than the other way, and in the lower orientation it's low enough for the earbud case I use it with to not charge.
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My pixel 7 seems to have fully died out of the blue while charging two days ago, using a USB-C I thought might be getting a little flaky (connected to my mac, I'd occasionally get repeating disconnects). I wonder if something along these lines could be the culprit.
I picked it up to find it had shut itself off, and now won't accept any charge, wireless or wired from any combination of power sources and cables. No signs of life at all.
Could you elaborate on "orientation"?
Let's say for C-to-C, are you talking about swapping the head/tail? Or simply connecting at a different angle (180 degrees)?
Thats so weird, did you wind up coloring one end or something? I still wish we would add color to USB C wires like USB 3 has to emphasize features and expected uses. USB C was a much needed change from USB3 and 2 in terms of being reversible and superior but every manufacturer implements the cables differently and its confusing and hard to figure out which cable is best for what.
The audio community love this sort of thing and will pay top dollar for unidirectional cables. Reproducible data proving the claims could be worth millions.
Wait what. I thought half the point of usb c was to not rely on orientation.
Is there any way to check this other than experiment?
My "solution" so far has been to not buy cheap cables and just hope I get quality in return.
It is not unheard of to have single damaged lines/connector-joints within a cable. The question is whether your cable was designed that way or whether it was damaged in a way that made it do this.
I can confirm, I have a USB-C cable with the same problem, charging speed depends on the orientation of the USB-C connector, which is hilarious.
It was not a cheap cable, it was a medium-priced one with good reviews from a known brand.
I still prefer cables that are USB-A on one side for exactly this reason. Directionality is totally fine and even expected if one end is USB-A, but for a symmetrical looking cable it's a terrible idea.