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That's strange, I've never encountered a usb-c cable that did not support data at all. My understanding (and the article suggests) that charging and data are fine in general, but just not as fast as the device can support. Basically they will charge or transfer data at regular usb or micro-usb speeds.

discuss

itsspring|5 years ago

Ya, I found the answer on Apple's site:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208368

> Compared with Apple USB-C Charge Cable The Apple USB-C Charge Cable is longer (2m) and also supports charging, but data-transfer speed is limited to 480Mbps (USB 2.0) and it doesn't support video. The Apple Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) cable has Thunderbolt logo on the sleeve of each connector. Either cable can be used with the Apple USB-C Power Adapter.

trav4225|5 years ago

I definitely have encountered this. One was even a device intended for development via USB. For some strange reason, the USB-C cable shipped with the product only supported power, requiring the customer to buy another cable for data transfer.

sackofmugs|5 years ago

Just to clarify, are you talking about a usb-c to usb-a cable, or a usb-c to usb-c cable? I think the usb-c to usb-a cables are just temporary while we get to usb-c everything, and so are not implemented that well. With usb-c to usb-c cables, I've never had a problem with power or charging.

dogma1138|5 years ago

The cable that comes with the Mac chargers is only a USB 2.0 + USB-C power delivery the cable and doesn’t support usb 3.0/3.1 data rates or TB.

USB type-C cables that support power delivery can have 2 ground pints, 4 VBUS (power) pins and 1 CC (cable connect/config channel) pin.

atombender|5 years ago

The first MacBook model with USB-C shipped with a USB 2.0 cable for its charger that only supported charging. I don't know if this is still true, though (I haven't checked the one that came with my newest one).

sackofmugs|5 years ago

Do you have a source? I looked for a while and couldn't find anything except ones that say it supports data, just usb 2.0 speeds.

MatmaRex|5 years ago

I haven't seen one either but I can easily believe it, as there are proprietary magnetic USB-C adapters that do not support data (they only have 5 or 6 pins). I can imagine a "normal" cable behaving the same way.

Dylan16807|5 years ago

Two pins for power, two pins for data, a pin or two for cable detection, what's the problem with that number of pins?

kelnos|5 years ago

I specifically bought a charge-only USB-C cable so I wouldn't have to worry about plugging my phone into an untrusted port to charge.