It'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.
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.
Some cables write 10Gbps and similar near the end.
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)?
Probably 180 degrees rotation in the plug (on either end). It commonly happens if one of the contacts or conductors for USB-PD signalling is not working correctly. (because of the way the pinout is designed to work either way around, the conductors that are used for signalling swap roles depending on the orientation)
Yep, 180 degree rotation.
Yeah so probably one or more of the pins are bad in your cable, since the usb c pin design the same from left to right in either orientation: https://www.delock.com/infothek/USB-3.2_USB-Type-C/usb-3.2-u...
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.
It won't be a damaged wire, there's only one set of those, it's the plug lacking connectors or having them not connected
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.
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.
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.
well, if you listen to audio you would not want the audio to accidentally get confused and head back to where it came from halfway down the cable right?
Audio people lost me when they complained about tape hiss being an issue with Digital Audio Tape. They then moved on to gold plated terminals and left twisted vs right twisted pairs wires inside multi conductor cables.
“This cut signal reflections, yielding brighter high hats without the brassiness of two-directional cabling. Bass was particularly clear and rumbly without the muddiness we heard from Monoprice cords.”
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.
> I thought half the point of usb c was to not rely on orientation. > Is there any way to check this other than experiment?
Well sure, a standards-compliant cable will work in either orientation, but it's always possible for some but not all of the pins or wires to break.
I believe USB C cables actually do have an orientation - it's just that the negotiation both ends do usually makes that orientation irrelevant.
Maybe the negotiation can fail & the plugged in orientation is then the only one that works?
USB-C only has an "intrinsic" orientation because we call one set of pins "1" and the other "2". Electrically there should be no difference.
No, there really is an intrinsic orientation, at least once a cable is plugged in.
The receptacles are symmetric, but a full connection is not. The cable only connects CC through end-to-end on one of A5 or B5, but not both, which lets the DFP detect which of A5 or B5 should be CC. The one not used for CC is then used to power the e-marker in the cable, if any.
This is also true for legacy adapters; for example, for C-to-A USB 3 adapters, the host needs to know which of the two high-speed pairs to use (as USB 3 over A/B connectors only supports one lane, while C supports two).
I think that I have a specific cable-device-orientation that is broken. Meaning, I think a particular USB C cable won't charge my phone if it's plugged in 'backwards'.
I always assumed that USB C cables use different pins depending on orientation, and that some pins on the cable wore down.
Maybe that's what happened here?
My guess would be they used a one-sided pcb to connect the cable to and used half the wires. Some sockets internally link the power and ground pins, so it works both ways, but you get no resistor network and thus only standard 5v which gives you 500ma max (at best). With the resistors connected by the cable it's about 900ma to 3a which is probably what happens plugged in "correctly". Or some other magic happens on one side of the PCB to fool the charger into pushing the full 3A.
Shouldn't a compliant USB-C DFP not supply Vbus without the resistor network, though, so there should be no charging at all? (Not that all DFPs necessarily do the correct thing, of course.)
Correct, which is probably why it won't even charge their earbuds in the broken orientation.
I think a more distressing thought is that it’s quite possible that your cable won’t charge your phone if it’s plugged in forwards.
It's CC2/VCONN used for eMarker. That pin may be terminated inside the cable and used to power eMarker chip. It can also be used for orientation sensing. I think.
It happens. More often than not, it can be physical damage or manufacturing defect for one of the contacts and/or wires.
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.