By 
Shopping for a USB Type-C cable has proven to be much more tricky than buying the technology of yesteryear. Some manufacturers don’t follow the specifications 100%, and this has led to a sea of problematic cables which could damage your device.
That’s why folks like Benson Leung have been trying to keep folks informed on which cables are good by personally testing the various cables on the market. It wasn’t until his warnings of danger were backed up by an actual incident that people started to take it seriously.
But one man can’t do it all. That’s why the USB 3.0 Group — part of the USB Implementers Forum — has developed a great solution. They’ve announced a system where devices can detect whether a cable is up to spec and automatically reject USB cables if they aren’t. The method would completely refuse power from the USB cable upon detection of a bad cable.
Without getting into the murky details, the standard gives OEMs and developers freedom to use their existing security policies, so there’s virtually no drawback for implementing it. This is a very nice solution for the growing problem of faulty cables seeding the market — you can’t stop the guys from making it, but you can stop them from working with your products.
We’re not yet sure how far out we are from seeing this in consumer products, but we imagine it’s something many OEMs will be eager to use to cut down on the warranty claims they’re bound to get from the destruction a faulty cable can do.
[via BusinessWire]
Comments