We’ve been following the growing prevalence of USB-C technology for a while now. For the most part, it wasn’t too commonly seen (except for on Apple laptops), but now competitors, like Lenovo and Asus are including USB-C ports on their products.
According to The Verge, Asus has a new Chromebook laptop on the way, which looks like it lacks the traditional USB 3.0 ports in favor of the USB-C port, like MacBooks.
Lenovo isn’t completely ditching the USB 3.0 port, but is including the USB-C technology on a new dock device.
After Apple decided to get rid of the regular 3.5 mm headphone jack on its new iPhone 7, the question of whether or not the USB device could replace headphone jacks became a real possibility.
“To a large degree, [USB-C] constrains the form factor [of devices],” Brad Saunders, chairman of the USB Implementers Forum, told Tech Radar. “Because now it’s the thickest connector on the device, it’s the deepest connector, and to some degree, it’s even the widest connector, because it’s an analog port that you need to put space around, because you can’t have it interfering with other things. Get rid of the headphone jack , and your phone could be a millimeter thinner.”
Enter USB-C connector.
“We have USB audio, it already works,” Saunders added. “The headphones I use at my desk plug into my USB port and they’re Skype-compatible. We’re all used to using Skype headsets with our desktop and notebook PC’s, but that’s about as far as it goes.”
He added that the problem is that USB audio hasn’t been as widely adopted across operating systems and hardware. But, as we can see with Lenovo and Asus, that could change.
“USB audio does have some distinct advantages,” Saunders said. “It doesn’t just send the audio, it also sends information about the capability of the headphones or speakers, the volume to play the audio at and so on.”
