Refurbished 185's power socket

[mike57]

Why has the power socket on the refurbished 185's been moved so far under the table. You have to double yourself up to see the socket, and as I discovered when I investigated yesterday there is a USB socket, but unless you know the socket is there its completely hidden. (It wasn't like this before refurbishment).

 

[Agent_Squash]

Doesn’t help that the voltage on the USB ports is actually to high to use an iPhone anyway...

 

[D365]

Doesn’t help that the voltage on the USB ports is actually to high to use an iPhone anyway...

If the USB voltage is greater than 5V wouldn’t that cause problems for anything you plug in?

 

[Agent_Squash]

If the USB voltage is greater than 5V wouldn’t that cause problems for anything you plug in?

Must do - certainly stops the touch sensors on an iPhone working, everything else i’ve got uses the power socket.

 

[D365]

That has got to be a unit problem, I recall making use of the new USB outlet feature last month (lady alongside me needed to charge her phone too so used the normal socket...) and had no problems at all.

 

[yorksrob]

The USB socket on the refurbished 185 actually charges my phone (hooray) as opposed to the old ones on the unrefurbished units which didn't make any difference.

 

[47271]

There is something awkward about them.

Just before Christmas, and when I was about to leave an aisle seat on a refurbed 185 I asked a very helpful elderly man to disconnect my charger and he somehow managed to twist the USB in such a way that the wires got stretched and I had to replace the whole unit. I don't blame him at all, but I did think at the time that it was odd how easy it was to get it wrong.

 

[yorksrob]

Whatever their faults, they're as nothing compared to the overall horror show of abysmal design that is the micro-USB port.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Must do - certainly stops the touch sensors on an iPhone working, everything else i’ve got uses the power socket.

That is I think an earthing not a voltage issue. I've got a plug in charger that does the same thing (but has never actually caused damage to my iPad or iPhone, and it is plugged into one of those chargers every night).

 

[headshot119]

Doesn’t help that the voltage on the USB ports is actually to high to use an iPhone anyway...

That's an earth fault, I've been on several units where it's an issue.

 

[_toommm_]

Whatever their faults, they're as nothing compared to the overall horror show of abysmal design that is the micro-USB port.

New Androids have USB-C. It's an absolute godsend and once it's on all devices (it's on new laptops and can basically replace every other port) the future really will be now

 

[yorksrob]

New Androids have USB-C. It's an absolute godsend and once it's on all devices (it's on new laptops and can basically replace every other port) the future really will be now

I look forward to it. It's hard to see how anything could be worse than micro-USB.

 

[whhistle]

Whatever their faults, they're as nothing compared to the overall horror show of abysmal design that is the micro-USB port.

Are you kidding? :P
That's like saying the design of old TVs is abysmal, or old cars...

USB-A/B --> Mini USB --> Micro USB --> USB-C type.
It's just an evolution. Yes, perhaps "they" should have skipped the micro USB but at least it brought some sort of standard to electrical devices

Give it a couple of years and everything will be USB-C. I'd be weary of buying a phone that isn't USB C these days. Although many phone makers are concentrating on quick charge now as (phone) battery capacity has sort of reached the limit.

 

[yorksrob]

Are you kidding? :P
That's like saying the design of old TVs is abysmal, or old cars...

USB-A/B --> Mini USB --> Micro USB --> USB-C type.
It's just an evolution. Yes, perhaps "they" should have skipped the micro USB but at least it brought some sort of standard to electrical devices

Give it a couple of years and everything will be USB-C. I'd be weary of buying a phone that isn't USB C these days. Although many phone makers are concentrating on quick charge now as (phone) battery capacity has sort of reached the limit.

I stand by my point.

The micro-USB managed to be worse than pretty much all previous mobile phone sockets and traditional USB ports. There was no excuse for such a flimsy piece of design which (unlike the TV or the car) didn't actually Bering any improvement.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It did bring an improvement - a standard plug for most devices.

It also has one clever element to its design - the spring is on the plug, not the socket, meaning that sockets don’t need replacing quite as often, just cables. If you buy cheap cables that means you get poor performance unlike Lightning cables, though, which might be why some people have such trouble with it.