Hands On with USB Type C: Reversible USB Connectors

Today, the USB-IF brought me in to see the long-awaited USB Type C cables. We’ve written about this before, but for those that aren’t familiar with this new USB spec, the USB Type C cable and USB 3.1 spec are designed with the future in mind. As a result, there are a lot of new features to talk about. We’ll start with the USB 3.1 spec before we get into the Type C connector.

With USB 3.1, we see a few key improvements. Peak throughput goes to 10 Gbps from 5 Gbps, which translates to a peak of 1.25 GB/sec. In a demo of an early controller with two SSDs attached to the system I saw peak throughput of 833 MB/sec. As a side note, I also saw a demo of wireless USB connectivity from smartphone to laptop and laptop to smartphone, which was definitely pretty cool. Getting back to the USB 3.1 spec, USB Power Delivery 2.0 (PD) makes it possible for USB to supply up to 100 watts, and coexists with the BC 1.2 spec that is used in USB power adapters to charge phones so a single port would be able to provide power for both systems. In addition, USB PD 2.0 allows for power to go both ways without changing the direction of the cable, so a laptop would be able to send and receive power from the same port. Finally, USB Type-C extensions mean that it’s possible to do all kinds of interesting applications over USB ports, such as sending audio and video data. It’s even possible for a USB Type C port to send PCI-E data through the connection for use cases such as a two in one convertible tablet.

This opens up the possibility for a dock scenario where a single cable to the monitor can charge a laptop and also mirror the laptop’s display onto the external monitor, and the external monitor would also be able to serve as a USB hub for a keyboard, mouse, headsets, flash drives, and other USB peripherals. While the laptop charging aspect and integrated USB hub in display wasn’t demonstrated in the prototype I saw, everything else was fully working as shown in the photo above.

I was also able to get some photos of the cable and receptacle. Unfortunately it took flash to really show the detail in the connector but it definitely will be a great standard for all kinds of applications. While I’m sure that there will be differences in the final product, the reversible plug works just like expected and could be quickly inserted from behind the back. The USB-IF believes that this standard will show up in products shipping in 2015. It does seem that the connector is a bit less compact than microUSB, but the benefits outweigh this increase in size.

T-Mobile Announces Uncarrier 7.0: Personal CellSpot, WiFi Unleashed

While it was alluded to in the iPhone 6 announcement, today T-Mobile is announcing WiFi Unleashed, which enables WiFi calling and texting for all Simple Choice customers and seamless hand-off of calls to cellular. In addition, T-Mobile is also partnering with GoGo to provide free text messaging and visual voicemail in flights that use GoGo to provide WiFi.

On the Personal CellSpot side, T-Mobile will give a free Asus 802.11ac WiFi router with 25 USD refundable deposit to Simple Choice customers starting on September 17th, which also acts as a femtocell and will provide signal to improve capacity and coverage of the network.

Overall, this seems to only extend the lead that T-Mobile already has with their extensive focus upon disrupting how mobile network operators do business in the US, and it’ll be interesting to see what’s in the Personal CellSpot.

SwiftKey to be Available at iOS 8 Launch

While it was pretty well-known that SwiftKey was coming to iOS 8, it wasn’t really clear when this would happen. However, we now know that SwiftKey will be available at the launch of iOS 8, which is definitely great news. For those that are unfamiliar with SwiftKey, this is a custom keyboard that is rather well-known for its word prediction algorithms which adapt to the user over time. In addition to the standard prediction insertion upon tapping the spacebar, SwiftKey’s latest version adds automatic space insertion in predictions depending upon context. In addition, if given appropriate permission SwiftKey can scan through social media, email, and text messages to build its prediction systems.

One of the major use cases for SwiftKey is its dual prediction capabilities, which makes it possible for the keyboard to infer what language you intend a word to be in, and change its predictions accordingly. This means you can switch between languages within a sentence without ever tapping a button to switch between languages. This is supported for English US/UK/AU/CA, Portugese BR/PT, French CA/FR, Italian, German, and Spanish ES/Latin America/US. In addition, for the iPod Touch and iPhone SwiftKey on iOS will support Flow, which is largely similar to Swype for those familiar with Nuance’s Swype keyboard.