For a while now, we’ve been trying to both minimize and optimize our cable and power travel kit.
Back in Jan-02025, we wrote Optimized Charging about our attempts to figure out what is the maximum power draw from various devices. Maybe those big power-bricks went over board for most devices.
This time we’re back to the opposite direction. We’ve acquired several ‘fun’ bits of hardware that are certainly not premium Apple devices. As such, they are usually USB-C charging ports; thanks to the EU e-waste rules attempting to minimize cables and plugs, but these devices tend to ship with a USB-C to USB-A cable.
That’s annoying because we’re doing our best to move to JUST USB-C to USB-C cables to minimize what we need to take with us. When we plug-in our USB-C candy bar burner phone to a 20W Apple USB-C PD plug, nothing happens. Sometimes the manufacture recommends to use the plug that came with their device. Which is exactly what we’re trying to avoid.
After some digging we realized that these ‘cheap’, ‘fun’ hardware toys were shipping with a USB-C to USB-A cable is because USB-A will only pass through (up to) 15W of power, defaulting to something closer to 5W. When we were plugging in a USB-C to USB-C cable from the device to the charger, the charger was using the PD (power delivery) to try to negotiation with the device how much power to actually supply. Since these ‘dumb’ devices were not PD compatible, they never answered the hand-shake and therefore power never started flowing.
Just having a USB-A in the chain between the PD Plug and the device stops the handshake and limits the power way down. Then no negotiation is needed and power flows.
Using a 35W Apple duel USB-C PD plug, we plugged in a USB-C to USB-C cable to our burner phone and there was no charge. We swapped the cable for a USB-C to USB-A cable, with a USB-A to USB-C adapter and plug that into the 35W plug. The burner phone immediately lit up charging!
If any non-PD device comes along with us we now have to figure out a new system.
- Keep our USB-C only cables and find a very lower Wattage plug that is USB-C and not PD and bring that along.
- Bring along a USB-C to USB-A cable and a USB-A plug
- Bring along a USB-C to USB-A cable and a USB-A to USB-C adapter
It will probably be option 3, simply because when we get onto an airplane or hotel they usually still have USB-A plugs. Which means we were carrying a USB-C to USB-A adapter already, we could forego that and just bring the cable.