Like any well-adjusted technology enthusiast, you’re probably a big fan of USB-C: reversible, elegant, ubiquitous. Its adoption has been so lauded that’s its little wonder we can’t help but turn our faces in disgust whenever we’re forced to deal with legacy micro-USB (and do not even get us started on mini). But for as much as we like about it, USB-C is a lot more than just a super-handy physical connector, and depending on the devices we’re using with it, there can be a lot of (sometimes confusing) differences about the features it supports.
That’s true not just across manufacturers, but even within the same hardware families — just look at data speeds on Apple’s iPhone 15 and 16 series, where the lower-model phones are stuck with 480Mbps over USB 2.0, while the Pro editions get USB 3.1 Gen 2×1 and blistering 10Gbps performance. That’s an order of magnitude improvement, but you wouldn’t have any real sense of the potential there by just looking at their USB-C ports alone. And this isn’t even touching on differing levels of charging support.