Smartphone manufacturers have it hard in today’s consumer market. There was once a time when a few smartphone makers stood out for their hardware designs, being praised merely because of how gorgeous their smartphones looked (little mattered about the software). Today, however, numerous smartphones on the market look good – leaving manufacturers to find new technologies, or at least implementations, by which to stand out from the pack.
ShenZhen Chinese smartphone maker OnePlus took the market by
storm with its one-click root device (OnePlus One) with its CyanogenMod ROMming
and vanilla Android appeal. The price was just as good as the hardware and
software, $322USD, leaving many to wonder why they’d pay $600 for a phone when
a more inexpensive but more freeing experience would work for them.
Even with the price, however, OnePlus has stood out for
other things on its One smartphone, one of them being the use of DCI 4K video
recording. In the smartphone world and smart TV worlds, the use of “4K” is
tossed around by a number of manufacturers for marketing hype purposes. In reality,
there are two different kinds of “4K”: 1) true 4K and 2) 4K UHD. The second
option stands for “4K Ultra HD” and produces a resolution that’s near 4K (3,840
x 2160) but not exactly (true 4K has a resolution of 4,096 x 2,160). The “DCI
4K” in the OnePlus One’s camera means that its video recording capabilities match
that of the “Digital Cinemas Initiative” (hence, DCI) standards. DCI 4K is used
by professional photographers and the cinema industry at large, so the DCI
standard is true 4K. The 4KUHD standard will still produce excellent video
recording scenes, but it doesn’t match the 4K standard dictated by DCI. The
OnePlus One smartphone is one of the first smartphones to utilize true 4K video
recording capabilities.
Now, OnePlus is back to bring another industry standard to
the forefront: USB-C charging with the announcement about its next smartphone,
the OnePlus Two.
What is USB Type-C, or USB-C, charging?
USB Type-C or USB-C charging is the next standard in
“Universal Serial Bus,” a way to mark and define connector cables. We’ve had
our share of USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 when it comes to smartphones, but there are
still a few problems. For one, there’s always one end that must connect to the
port (you can’t reverse the ends for double connectivity), and current USB
standards aren’t as fast as they could be.
USB Type-C or USB-C has one major advantage: you can connect
either end of the cable to your smartphone or device without frustration. It’s
convenient, and consumers crave convenience more than ever in this high-tech
world in which we find ourselves.
There are other advantages to USB-C charging as well. I did
a perusal of some Web content about USB-C, and few tech sites actually list
many of the advantages of using this new technology. Other advantages include
faster charging, which means you won’t have to wait as long to see your
smartphone charge to 100%; faster data transfer rates, up to 10Gbps speeds –
Google Fiber won’t bring this quick a data transfer; it can double as a charger
and a video port so that you can actually record video and send it to
smartphones, tablets, and PCs; and, last but never least, it’s compatible with
current ports, though you’ll likely need an adapter.
As can be seen, USB-C charging does a number of things
quickly (data transfer) while remaining compatible with current USB port
standards and being an all-in-one USB solution. Samsung went with USB 3.0 in
its Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy S5 to push the progress of USB technology but
returned to USB 2.0 because the company claimed that few were using it.
We have a feeling that with Apple’s new implementation of it
in the MacBook, more manufacturers will want to push technological progress
forward with USB Type-C charging. Samsung’s Galaxy Note 5 is said to come with
USB-C charging as well, so the field is certainly ripe for OnePlus to blaze a
new trail in USB tech. The faster data transfer rates places USB-C charging in
the Space Age.
