It started with notebooks, but that wasn’t the master plan.

  • nezbyte@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Modular ports would be great. I’d love to have two USB ports on a phone rather than a USB and headphone jack.

    • tal@lemmy.today
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      2 months ago

      two USB ports

      I don’t know if both could provide the same amount of power, and I’d bet – given that laptops don’t – that the phone would only be able to charge off one.

      USB ports aren’t perfectly interchangeable today. If they can’t be made to be, I kind of wish that at least USB would have a set of standards for indicating power-in capable ports and ports by wattage capability. Like, reserve one color or symbol or something for one, one for another. Right now, device manufacturers just do whatever and sometimes don’t indicate what is what. I mean, yeah, it’s great that they’re backwards compatible, but when you have ports that don’t all behave the same, it’d be nice for it to be immediately-obvious what they do.

      Also, while I’m dreaming, I’d like power-pack and battery capacity to be listed in watt-hours rather than amp-hours, given (a) that voltage isn’t universally the same and (b) that what people care about is about how long something can be run (“I have an N watt device and an M watt-hour battery…”).

      • Billiam@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        given that laptops don’t – that the phone would only be able to charge off one.

        My personal Framework 13 can charge from either the left or right side USB-C ports, and my work Lenovo Thinkpad can charge from either the dedicated USB-C slot, or the USB-C dock port. Point is, as USB-C gains more widespread adoption, limiting a device to only using one port for charging is becoming much less common.

        That said, Framework does point out that not all the expansion bays can deliver/receive the same amount of power and they recommend (at least for the 13) to only use the rear ports for charging.

    • catloaf@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      I’m pretty sure that a USB hub would work at least on Android, giving you as many ports as you want.