You can charge them with a USB-C charger, but only with a cable that sets the voltage for the device. The fact that the USB-C port is used without selecting the charging voltage is beyond infuriating to me.
Based on that hypothesis, let me guess: The manufacturer used to make this model with a micro-B socket and did nothing to alter the design but change the physical socket.
Probably. USB-C has multiple protocols defining voltage, but they have to be “agreed” on by the charger and the device. Cheap devices skip that and it angers me more than it should. Or not enough, I haven’t come to a final conclusion.
USB Consortium: Okay, so our new connector can do everything! It’s almost as small as Micro-B, the plug is reversible in the socket like Lightning, the host and peripheral ends use the same port like FireWire, it’s got not four not nine but twenty-four pins so it can carry one USB 2.0 link, two USB 3.1 links, plus grounds, a couple different kinds of power and out-of-band communication, this thing should be good for high speed peripherals to include DisplayPort. This cable can do everything.
Device manufacturer: We make pocket flashlights. Our product is not Turing complete. We need no data transfer and 5V 1A of power. It would be a convenient end-user feature if it could charge from the same cables as our customer’s phones. What’s the minimum viable product for USB-C power delivery?
You can charge them with a USB-C charger, but only with a cable that sets the voltage for the device. The fact that the USB-C port is used without selecting the charging voltage is beyond infuriating to me.
Based on that hypothesis, let me guess: The manufacturer used to make this model with a micro-B socket and did nothing to alter the design but change the physical socket.
Probably. USB-C has multiple protocols defining voltage, but they have to be “agreed” on by the charger and the device. Cheap devices skip that and it angers me more than it should. Or not enough, I haven’t come to a final conclusion.
USB Consortium: Okay, so our new connector can do everything! It’s almost as small as Micro-B, the plug is reversible in the socket like Lightning, the host and peripheral ends use the same port like FireWire, it’s got not four not nine but twenty-four pins so it can carry one USB 2.0 link, two USB 3.1 links, plus grounds, a couple different kinds of power and out-of-band communication, this thing should be good for high speed peripherals to include DisplayPort. This cable can do everything.
Device manufacturer: We make pocket flashlights. Our product is not Turing complete. We need no data transfer and 5V 1A of power. It would be a convenient end-user feature if it could charge from the same cables as our customer’s phones. What’s the minimum viable product for USB-C power delivery?
USB Consortium: …It’s got Thunderbolt!
It…kind of hasn’t helped.