Being a Techy-Geeky Kid, I Always Had a Fascination of Having Things Connected

Being a techy-geeky kid, I always had a fascination of having things connected. Be it my gaming accounts to my social media accounts to all the possible home automation setups. Undeniably, a big part of connecting an electronic hardware to another involves wires. And having one wire standard to connect everything seemed too ideal to me but would be make the world an organised place if it ever had to happen. And when USB-IF announced the USB Type- C to the world in 2014, the idea thrilled me beyond limits. But it has been 6 years since then and the dream is far from reality. When I switched from my Samsung Galaxy A5 (1St gen) to the OnePlus 3, I was extremely excited to get on the USB-C journey. Dash charging was a big part of that excitement. But slowly and slowly it just became a port that I charged my phone from. In fact, I had a lot of trouble charging my phone when my phone ran low and I did not carry my own charger as no one had one of those chargers. So, had to carry a micro-USB to USB type-C, which turned out to be the opposite of ‘less cables, less hassle’. I cloud never find a flash drive I cloud connect directly to my phone, a display output that I cloud connect to, or even connect two phones directly on my journey with the OnePlus 3. Everything USB-C was becoming more and more of a confusion. Time came to replace my OnePlus 3 as I desired a new phone with those newer displays and lesser bezels. I got the option of Samsung S8 and I jumped on the touch-wiz train. Although both the phones had a type-C port, I did not have a type-C to type-C cable to switch my data. And had to use an OTG adapter that came in the box of the S8 (which I traded much later to a MacBook user and saved his life) and there was another adapter in the whole ‘everything USB- C’ dream. But dreams weren’t all in vain, at least I had two USB type-C cables and chargers, right? Well, the different charging standards is another article on its own. But to sum it short, if I used the OnePlus charger with my S8 (or vice versa) the charging was painfully slow. This was the time around which our beloved (headphone) Jack was dying. My stand on his disappearance was mixed. On one hand, I though this would push more and more people to adapt to the ‘one port for everything’ lifestyle but on the other hand, the move came as a very business centric move by Apple, and the port they were forcing was their lightning port. Inevitably, other smartphone manufacturers followed on the lines of Apple and slowly Jack was dumped by the android world too. And when I broke my S8 and used my uncle’s spare Pixel 2, finally I saw some ray of light for the dream. It came with a type-C to type-C cable which I used to transfer data directly from my S8, a USB-C to female USB-A adapter which just looked cool to own as it was Google’s and a USB-C to 3.5mm headphone adapter which accompanied my existing AKG earphones. So now I had an adapter for my earphones which was extremely bulky and made me go out on a USB-C earphones hunt. And to my disappointment, the market for it was almost none. With the few options either always being sold out to it being super expensive from Bose and Razer. Eventually my (over hyped) love for Beats made me buy a Beatsx which I got at an incredible discount from flipkart at a selling price of ₹ 6,000 ($80). Which just added up to the mess as it had lightning port to quick charge. Around this time, I made a purchase decision of an HP Envy 2017 model from Flipkart which has been one of my best decisions. Or that’s what I thought. In its I/O were two USB-C thunderbolt ports and a fingerprint scanner on the touchpad, both of which I was looking for along with a light and sturdy build. So now I had at least a common charger to charge my phone and my laptop, right? Well technically, I could have, at the cost of around ₹ 8,000 ($110) if I bought a USB-C charger from HP, as the USB power charging is not supported by any third- party chargers. Also, the fingerprint reader was only found in higher models of the series, but flipkart did not specify it anywhere. So, the two exciting factors for me did not turn out so well. Later I traded the Pixel for Samsung Galaxy S9 and I met jack again. And I was surprisingly feeling happy to see him, as it meant less bulk to carry around. Another device that I carried was a Mi Power Bank which had a micro USB port and by this point I had just given up on a seamless life with one cable for all my devices. In 2020, I switched to a OnePlus 7 Pro by which I bid my farewell to Jack once again. In the same year, my girlfriend also switched from her older iPhone to an iPhone 11 Pro Max which came in box with a type-C to lightning and cable. She was also a MacBook Air (2018) user and every time she asked me if I had a charger of her laptop, the old thoughts of having one cable for all came back again and again. Eventually I had my Samsung and OnePlus charger which was still painfully slow for the MacBook. Here it was the fault of the power adapter and the max output it could give, but hey, a kid has dreams alright? Her charging cable won’t work with my powerbank and existing power adapters. The powerbank had a Micro USB input and USB-A output ports. My phone and her phone could not use the same charger. Our laptops could not use the same charger. My external storage device won’t connect to her phone or laptop. We have different earphones for our phones and laptops. Neither of us can connect our laptops to an HDMI cable. Figuring out a way to charge devices by any third-party charger did not give optimal speed. And we’re still a long way from the dream, but we are moving towards it with a lot of hurdles to still face. But when that day comes that I could travel with just one charger for everything, that would fulfil this kid’s dream. .

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