I was trying to find some information about what would cause PD-compliant chargers to fry the Switch. It appears that while the switch is PD-compliant itself, they used a slightly non-standard connector that reduces tolerances and could, in some situations (most likely worn cables) cause some pins to electrically bridge and fry the port.
To be honest, this doesn't seem like an issue with USB C, just Nintendo intentionally implementing it wrong. They should have either used a proprietary port for the docking mechanism rather than modifying USB C in an unsafe way then saying only to use their proprietary charger.
https://www.amazon.ca/Charger-Adapter-Replacement-Thinkpad-M...
Now, I'm a cheapskate, so most of my electronics are older devices, and as a consequence we still also have various other cables kicking around— Lightning for both our iPhones and wireless earbuds, Micro USB for Kindle and PS4 controllers, even Mini USB for a few random devices.
But as far as USB-C, I would attribute the current mess to growing pains. For a few more years, charger pages will explicit list the products they work with, and eventually it will settle down to a list of must-work-with products for all chargers, and any new products with be tested to ensure that they work in the same ways as one or more of the items on that list of known-working products. Didn't HDMI have pretty much this exact issue with EDID and other chaos, until everyone basically agreed that whatever Sony was doing was the right thing and they'd copy them?
The main losers here are people trying to do new ground-up implementations, since they can't just work from the standard; they also need expensive consultants to tell them the precise subset of the standard is the actual part they can depend on. But for end users, the trend is toward an overall state of reasonable compatibility, with non-working devices quickly acquiring a reputation as such and being shunned out of the marketplace.
The Switch and Switch Dock are not USB-C devices. That you’re able to plug in a USB-C charger or USB-C device and see it supposedly work just means that you haven’t yet encountered the scenario(s) that can electronically damage the Switch. Nintendo’s warranty does not cover this damage when it occurs, requiring a full-cost repair or replacement as you connected unlicensed and unauthorized hardware to it.
The docks that do work generally reversed-engineered the proprietary protocol, and some have damaged Switches because they got details wrong.
Of course, had they used the native HDMI side-channel (which I’m not sure had been finalized at the time), they would have been able to skip this step.
I do think there's still the matter of "Not all USB-PD adapters provide the specific electrical demands of a Switch or Switch Dock" to contend with — and that does tie back to the original article's point about USB-C being kind of a nightmare.
EDIT: There are still reports of someone frying a Switch with an Apple USB-C power adapter (which is USB-C compliant), no dock or anything involved. Whatever else does or doesn't work, Nintendo won't cover damage under warranty if you used a third-party charger.
It is very annoying.
USB-PD is in a twilight zone where it can deliver enough power to cause safety risks but, due to its low voltage, is not subject to the level of regulatory scrutiny that other electrical products receive.
To date, the USB-IF's approach to safety and interoperability does not adequately protect consumers. USB-PD devices should not be incompatible to the point of damage but USB-IF has been unable to ensure this by keeping non-compliant products off the market.
USB-PD needs to be pulled under the IEC, NRTL (US) and CE (EU) regulatory systems and compliance overseen by entities with the legal authority to deter legitimate manufacturers/importers from selling non-compliant products.
"You can plug it in, but it might catch fire" just isn't good enough for a power delivery system that can provide 100W.
It might help resolve certain really common cases like compatibility between the chargers and devices of the mainstream entities. I guess I'd argue that that should be happening on its own, but Nintendo definitely dropped the ball with releasing a USB-C product in 2017 that was interoperable with Apple and other name-brand chargers which had been in existence for two years previously at that point.
In this particular case I think even well-known name brand chargers which follow standards (Apple, Anker) are breaking the Nintendo, and that's unacceptable.
Nintendo should have taken more steps with their charger to restrict the Switch to authorized chargers only, rather than permitting unsupported chargers (such as standard USB-C ones) from being able to power it. Or even just outright used a proprietary connector!
None of this is any fault of the chargers. They’re the ones adhering to the standards correctly. The Switch is at fault.
Imagine you go to a hotel and see an USB A port on the wall and you try to charge your phone, then your phone starts to smoke or simply ignites. You find later that port was not a standard USB A port, but a 220 volt plug for something custom. Should the hotel be responsible for that? I think it should. If it looks like a duck ...
Their website says that it uses USB-C for charging and the charging port accepts stock USB-C cables, it's not even remotely reasonable to bury within the warranty a statement which says "oh, by the way the device cannot accept USB-C cables -- if you use a made-to-spec cable that fits in the port, no warranty for you!".
If you shove 9V into a 5V device, bad things will happen, regardless of Nintendo is anti-standard or not
They put USB-C on the box. They screwed up the design. They should be forced to have a recall, or extend the warranty.
It would have been better if they'd launched another dozen different plug standards. In situations when there's only one thing you should be connecting to your device, that's the way to go. Universal sockets only make sense if they're actually universal.
Nothing above seems related to the standard. At the end of the day, its still comes down to the manufacturers to follow the standard in order for everything to to work. But the standard itself can't stop any particular manufacturer from making a non-compliant product.
Edit: A poster below this question said they fried their Switch by using their Macbook charger so I may have been naively optimistic in my original statement.
Sadly, the legal burden is placed exclusively on the buyer (via electrical code).
The outlet plugs specify the circuit breaker limit. Most consumer electronics in the US use a 15amp plug, which can be plugged into a 15amp outlet or a 20amp outlet — but no higher, due to physical incompatibilities in the outlet design.
The electronics that use the 15amp or 20amp plugs are therefore built not only to draw no more than the amps rated by their plugs, but also to self-destruct relatively safely if they draw the maximum amps available from the circuit breaker backing that plug.
So if a cheap device correctly assumes as part of its "don't explode" protections that it will never receive more than 20amps due to using a 15-or-20 amp plug, and then it short circuits while plugged into a 25 amp circuit using an adapter, it could very well explode, because the basic guarantees of electrical safety were violated. The plug used guaranteed it would never receive more than 20amp, and now it's receiving 25!
This is especially relevant when you're considering how to make use of an idle 30A dryer outlet in a garage. If you just plug an adapter into it, and your device short circuits, it will explode even more violently. Risk of harm increases with outlet power.
There exist fancy "breaker box" adapters that have a 30A plug on one side, a fuse box with a 15A or 20A fuse in the middle, and a 15A outlet on the other side for you to use. It's not really an adapter at that point, but the presence of that 15A/20A fuse provides the missing piece of protection for your 15A/20A device that a plain adapter wouldn't have.
So in summary, the only way to safely use a 15amp device on an outlet that delivers power higher than 15-20A is to somehow inline a 15-20A breaker between the device and the outlet (or, to rewire the outlet and its power feed to 15-20A).
TL;DR: Hire a licensed electrician to tell you what your options are and decide how much you care to spend and whether you want to make permanent modifications to get the job done.
Most lamp cords are only sized 100ish Watts or ~ 1A with the bulb being the only fuse. If these somehow pulled 15A for any amount of time the wire would quickly get smoking hot but you still plug them into a 15A plug.
Devices are supposed to protect themselves. Most 15A devices will cause fires if they actually pull 15A for any amount of time. If you try to use a a small extension cord on your space heater, you will soon be smelling burnt plastic while never getting over 15A draw. That is part of why these are such a fire hazard.
Alos in the US a 20A socket is designed to allow a 15A plug to work in it, But not the opposite way as that would cause issues in the wall.
The actual range was a bit different by Ampage which I never quite understood.
No safety margin can account for purposeful circumvention, which is what connecting a 15/20A outlet to a 30A circuit is.
I didn't say any difference was unacceptable, but a significant difference for 20/25 should not be accepted.
If the danger gets gradually worse for every 5 amps on the fuse, that's fine. Then the excess danger at 25 or 30 amps is only a tiny fraction of the excess danger at 100 amps. Good work.
If the danger has a sudden sharp increase at a certain amperage, then that amperage threshold needs to be further away than a mere 20/25 difference. Or even 20/30.
The reverse of this is plugging big loads like power tools or vacuum cleaners into extension cords intended for use with desk lamps, but I think most people understand that that's a bad idea.
Generally, where there's a 30A circuit, a 15A circuit is also available, but there are exceptions. You may have wired a RV hookup with only a 30A receptacle, but you want to run some lights, or tools or ? with a 15A plug from that on a temporary basis. The circuit is (presumably) good for 30A, so adapting to a lower amp receptacle is reasonable --- it won't hurt anything to draw fewer amps through the circuit.
Adapting from a 15A socket to a 30A socket can be dangerous; the 15A or 20A[1] breaker or fuse on the circuit won't immediately open with a 30A draw, and the wiring will heat up during the time it takes for the circuit protection to open; possibly long enough to cause a fire. Of course, just because a load has a 30A plug doesn't mean it draws 30A all the time, there are conditions where using such an adapter is safe, but it requires knowledge of the load.
[1] US NEC code allows for a 20A breaker on circuits served by 15A receptacle, as long as there is more than one receptacle
Why? Why was it so hard for them to implement USB-C the proper way? Why were they allowed (and why did they want) to use patented USB-C plugs if they didn't want to actually implement USB-C? The only explanation I can come up with is they intended to earn money from repairing.
If it is true that third party charging devices is fine, then that is great news.
[1] https://plus.google.com/102612254593917101378/posts/2CUPZ5yV...
https://web.archive.org/web/20190301015818/https://plus.goog...
I'm pretty sure that's the dock that has a slightly nonstandard plug, not the switch itself.
The purpose of universal is everything works with everything. whoever breaks that is at fault and should pay the price. If Nintendo has used some other port I wouldn't have the expectation, but they used a universal port so they need to be compatible.
It’ll probably be fixed in future generations but Nintendo decided not to make design changes for Gen 1 and Gen 2 Switch to fully comply with USB-C PD specs.
Do you also think that the Raspberry Pi 4 USB-C incompatibility is intentional? That came out waaay later
I know the switch gets the spec wrong in a few places, but there is only one thing I have heard about that causes damage, and that is knockoff chargers that grossly overvolt the data pin used for power negotiation.
Else we wouldn't be in a situation where most (all?) Laptop USB-C PD chargers work without problems with the switch.
https://www.nintendo.com/switch/tech-specs/
I was not pleased with it being an outside warranty issue, but I paid up just to get the thing fixed and back.
Either way, it would have nothing to do with “the mess that is USB-C” (i.e. the inability to identify which of the various wire protocols that work over USB-C cables that a USB-C port follows/supports), because such a port isn’t following any of the USB-C-cable compatible standards.
It’d be like saying Nintendo hurt the mini-DVD format when they used non-compatible mini-DVDs in the GameCube. Those discs have nothing to do with the mini-DVD standard; they just happen to share a physical substrate and so a physical appearance. They’re not claiming to be mini-DVDs.
And nor does Nintendo claim the Switch’s charging port to be a USB-C port. In all the docs, it specifically says that it’s just a port for the Dock or the Switch AC charger to plug into. It just happens to share a form-factor.
Do you remember the days when every connector looked like a DB9 connector with only some of the pins populated? (E.g. the various game-controller ports on the Atari, Commodore, Amiga, etc.) Or later, when every connector looked like a PS/2 port, with only some of the pins populated (e.g. Apple Desktop Bus)? None of these were claiming to be the same type of cable or jack or socket. None of them were claiming cross-compatibility. They all just happened to share the same physical connector—because it was a cheap and plentiful, easy-to-source part to build your own proprietary cables and jacks and sockets in terms of.
Heck, do you know how many random different types of cables are terminated with TRS or RCA connectors? Would you blame your hairdryer for “destroying the audio ecosystem” because its wall-charger is terminated in an RCA jack, and you could theoretically plug said RCA jack into an iPod (probably frying it in the process)?
The outlier in all this isn’t USB-C, but rather the previous USB physical-connector standards. Pretty much nobody used those for anything other than USB devices. Probably because the connectors were 1. expensive as parts, and therefore not really worth using in your own project unless you specifically were trying to be a part of the USB ecosystem; and 2. weren’t designed to be physically capable of meeting the current-draw requirements that proprietary cabling standards would want to place on them.
In being both cheap and capable of high current delivery, USB-C connectors are just bringing us back from the temporary reprieve of USB-A/B, to the world of the 100 years before that, where a physical connector tells you nothing about what type of cable you’ve got, because every fly-by-night company uses any random connector for whatever they like.
You know how USB jacks and sockets had the USB icon on them? That was because the USB Consortium assumed people would do random things with the USB connector standard; and so the icon was meant to distinguish the USB connector as applied to a USB use-case. It never really became relevant in USB-A/B, but it’s actually relevant now in USB-C. That icon is what tells; not the shape of the socket.
Somehow, I got through that time without ever having plugged the power into the microphone socket. I am not that careful.
But if you have a standard aren't you supposed to enforce stuff like this ? Precisely to avoid the confusion and protect your standard.
The Nintendo charging port is not labelled with a USB logo. It’s fundamentally not a USB-C port. It doesn’t make any claim to obey any standard. The USB Consortium was not involved; nor do they have a legal right to get involved, if Nintendo has no interest in putting that USB logo on their product.
Interestingly (to me), this seems to be a central point in Nintendo’s business model: they don’t do licensing fees, if they can at-all help it. They’re willing to break compatibility with some standard, if that’s what it takes to avoid having to pay someone a fee for every unit sold. That’s not exactly why the GameCube’s discs aren’t mini-DVDs (that’s more a DRM thing); but it is why none of their peripherals so far have had a Bluetooth logo on them, despite being in essence Bluetooth peripherals (but ones that sit in a separate Bluetooth “namespace” such that you need a customized Bluetooth driver to talk to them; presumably because putting those devices into the regular Bluetooth namespace would involve doing something that infringes on the Bluetooth Special Interest Group’s IP.) It’s also, way back when, why Nintendo dropped the deal with Sony to make the Nintendo PlayStation — they didn’t want to have to pay the licensing fees for printing CD-ROMs!
What the port isn't, is a USB certified port. USB certification guarantees that it'll be safe to plug any USB-certified thing into any other USB-certified thing. Without that certification, the device isn't guaranteeing its ability to handle weird things that other USB devices might do—like sending it lots of current without doing a specific proprietary negotiation first.
It's a bit like FCC certification for "accepting radio interference." Devices that have it, are guaranteed to not melt down/throw sparks if you bring them close to e.g. HV power lines, or a radio tower. Devices that don't have it, aren't guaranteed to not do that. They might or they might not; but they weren't required to be tested to find out if they would.
But unlike FCC certification, where it's illegal to sell something in the US containing an antenna if it's not FCC certified, it's entirely legal to produce and market a device that has USB connectors, but isn't USB certified. There's nothing stopping companies from doing it—other than the expectation that consumers might care about the USB logo being on the product. If a company thinks consumers won't care about that in their case, they have no reason to bother.
(That's not to say Nintendo shouldn't have made their product fail safe under out-of-tolerance conditions from other USB devices anyway. It would just be good engineering to do that, even if you don't want to pay the licensing fee. But they didn't think to test for those conditions—likely because the USB Consortium wasn't invited to come breathe down their necks reminding them about things like that.)
Compliance enforcement didn't matter much when USB was just data and low-wattage electricity, but USB-PD provides enough power to be hazardous. That risk is not currently being effectively managed.
"Buyer beware" isn't an adequate solution to avoiding device damage or cables catching fire.
I do think there's something to be said for liability for creating a port that is so similar to USB-C, but also causing damage, akin to copyright laws, based on consumer confusion. I.e., if a reasonable person might think it is a variant of USB-C, and USB devices seem to work for long periods of time without apparent damage, then Nintendo is liable by virtue of resulting damage to the consumer's property (not to the USB organization). There's a certain liability for negligence in that case. But I could also see reasonable arguments that if Nintendo were explicitly saying it is not a USB port, that they shouldn't be liable (I don't agree but see it as a reasonable argument).
But if Nintendo is advertising it in anyway like that, they should be held liable. I just don't see a reasonable argument for why that wouldn't be the case. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
In the EU there's an automatic 2 year replacement warranty on electronics too.
Which makes sense to me, because “licensing the port design” would involve trying to extract money from the wrong people — it would target the bulk parts manufacturers producing the USB-C connectors. Those parts manufacturers would have to pay per connector-part produced in such a scheme. Those businesses 1. operate on razor-thin margins such that there’s no margin to extract there, and 2. don’t have nearly the tight logistics pipelines that consumer-electronics companies do, so there’d likely be huge bins of USB-C connectors laying around awaiting an order, where they’d have to eat the licensing fees in advance of receiving payment for the parts (which puts a big hole in their cashflow.)
Much better to go after the high-margin device manufacturers and OEM integrators. But you can’t really pursue them for infringing on the part; they didn’t make it, they just bought it. They’d tell you to go chase the people they bought it from. (And, as said above, you don’t want to do that.) Instead, you have to pursue them for something they’re doing. Such as adding the USB logo to their product.
Remember when people were mad about Apple patenting rounded corners? This would be as bad.
Consider the situation with standard NEMA 5-15R receptacles. As far as I'm aware, the design is not legally protected, but any manufacturer who made a '5-15R' receptacle that couldn't carry 15A--or any device manufacturer who decided to re-purpose the pins such that the ground conductor carried 240V--would have legal problems if they brought their product to market.
This is where USB-PD should be: in a situation where physical connector compatibility brings with it enough design assurances that any pairing of legally-available devices won't blow up, catch fire, or burn out. Ideally, any USB-PD device pairing should work, but at the moment the bare minimum needs to be that any device pairing is safe.
Someone making a port the exact size and shape of a USB-C port (within tolerances) is doing it for the purpose of being compatible, and telling them to meet the (non-onerous) spec to be allowed would not get nasty headlines.
People put TRS (3.5mm audio) jacks on random proprietary wall-chargers. They don't do it so that the charger can "be compatible with" the analog-audio ecosystem (what do you want to do; plug your charger into an amplifier?)
No, these manufacturers use TRS jacks, because TRS jacks (and sockets) are cheap parts. (Remember, they're not making these parts; they're just ordering them, in bulk, from some supplier that has a warehouse full of them. And that supplier doesn't care what they're used for; they just want to get them sold.)
USB-C connectors are now also seemingly beginning to be cheap parts.
But even if they want to, it would be better if someone stops them.
Seems to me like that claim is false advertising at the minimum, and specifically exempting other charges on top of that is very consumer unfriendly.
this is not correct. Ctrl-f "USB Type-C", it's right there.
Also most charger are fully compatible with the switch off I remember correctly the only way to fry your switch with a charger is by using a charger with high voltage/amper support with a cable which doesn't support any form of fast charging and even then it might not happen. But most chargers which support faster charging do have the cable fixed to the charger to prevent any user confusion.
As an effect of this most (all?) USB-C PD laptop chargers work with the switch. Only with chargers for phones and small tablets do you have to be careful but again most higher quality chargers from that area work just fine, too.
I'd actually say its more like building a failed structure out of something that looks like, but actually isn't, concrete, and then saying that concrete is a terrible material to use for buildings.
This is a violation of the USB spec, not a flaw in it. Anyone could deliver mains AC voltage over a USB-C cable, and it would fry just about everything on the market.
Plus, Nintendo is far from the only offender in the USB-C space.
I think that is very non-obvious though, especially for the typical consumer
- A dock, the alternate mode used isn't fully standard conform and prone to fry your switch.
- A unlucky combination of cheap but fully standard conform charger with bad cable with switch.
Through wrt. docks there is some non standard compilant parts about switching to the "dock" alternate mode, maybe I misremeber and that can't damage your switch.
Anyway if you by anything but super cheap potentially broken chargers in 2020 I would be very surprised if it damages yours Switch. Especially laptop chargers tend to work very well with it. Actually I observed (but maybe wrongly) that somehow my Lenovo think pad laptop charger does a better job when charging and at the same time playing in handheld mode .
Charging it has never been an issue for anyone and this is the first I heard being a charging issue
Can't this hazard be eliminated with some kind of "USB Condom" that would, at least, universalize your cables and ports ?
I have a USB condom that I use for standard USB ports for disabling data lines (turning them into power only cords) - I assume you could build a smarter, more sophisticated USB condom that would allow you to safeguard against these edge cases and incompatibilities ?
Charging undercharged lithium batteries must be done exactly right or it can get dangerous because of this is often only supported by OEM chargers or some workaround like keep your device plugged in for 12h even through it in no way indicates that is charging and it will then magically work again (my last phone )
A $60 bill to fix their fuckup? I'd have returned that under the (legal) warranty.
It's Apple's stuff(the irony of it, right?) that has all kinds of problems. I don't even charge my MacBook with Apple's chargers anymore.
Not only has the Switch always charged safely, later revisions are also more compliant. The issue has always been with the charger and dock. Never PD compliant chargers straight in the switch.
The thunderbolt 3 + usb C thing is true though. My Thunderbolt 3 dock won't charge a non-TB3 device. I'd consider that a minor issue though, especially as USB4 fixes it entirely.
It has worked reliably with pretty much every charger I threw at it so this sounds like one of those urban myths.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/08/heres-why-nintendo-sw...
GP is giving you their first-hand experience with this issue. It’s a little disrespectful to call it an urban myth replying to a first-hand account.
FWIW, the Switch charger outputs a higher voltage, IIRC.
What was bend-gate?
The fact that there's a wiki on "what usb c charger to buy" for your switch suggest many others are having issues too - https://www.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/comments/6jnkl4/list...
> Our engineers have inspected your Switch Console and found damage due to USB-C Connector Damage. Under our warranty policy we do not cover the cost of the repair for damaged items. A payment of £53.50 is required for us to complete the repair.
Personally I think it comes down to both the charging profiles the switch will accept are limited, such that some chargers don’t work with the switch - each USB PD charger supports a different set of charging specs (volts/amps/watts). https://www.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/ch99aj/apple_...
I’d also suggest that some PD bricks/chargers might not be as reliable at sending power, if so, or if a cable’s wiring sends it down the wrong path, it could be disastrous for many devices that don’t take this into account. I am reminded of reviews of USB-C cables from a few years ago from Benson Leung.
All my apple kit works fine off the Apple chargers, but I do have an external hard drive that has mixed Thunderbolt 3/USB 3.1 ports, which are absolutely not the same.
I love the port, but the standard just hasn't caught up and when a company like Nintendo flouts it anyway, you have a big problem.