The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee meant that most of the United Kingdom could take a few extra days off, so my wife and I went to London, then Scotland, for a short break.
I always pack plugs with separate USB inputs, along with extra wires and a battery pack, for those moments when you desperately need to charge your iPhone or Android device. However, I’ve been trying to move to USB-C lately, as my MacBook Pro and Sony WH-1000XM3 headphones mainly use these, whereas you can charge the iPhone X faster and have a USB-C cable can be charged with electricity.
Almost as soon as we stepped on the first train, that’s where I started seeing some issues – after that the hotels we stayed in and the Caledonian sleeper (opens in new tab) train, all of them have USB-A instead of USB-A There were ports. -C, and there was no easy plug on the train for where we were sitting.
Coming back, I can’t help but wonder if it’s time for the hotel and hospitality industry as a whole to look at USB-C ports or at least help hand out adapters to their guests. All devices are going to help accelerate the inevitable change in a few years.
USB-C? denied
(image credit: TechRadar)
There’s a good chance you’ve seen Lightning sockets that have USB-A ports—these are the oversized USB ports you’ve seen over the years, while USB-C looks like an iPhone Lightning port, just thicker.
However, we’re getting to a point where your phone only accepts USB-C, and, if the EU courts get their way, the iPhone of the future will have no choice but to adopt it.
This could mean that all the sockets you have installed in your home may be in vain, or you may be spending big on a USB-A to USB-C adapter.
We’ve been wanting to try Caledonian Sleeper (opens in new tab) for years. For those unaware, it is a train that travels to its destination during the night, giving you a good night’s sleep, and waking you up as soon as you arrive at various places in London or Scotland.
I mainly wanted to do it because it was a way to get to work and play games on a Mac as we drove through the Scottish Highlands, and it didn’t disappoint as I woke up at 4 a.m. to see the spectacular landscape in the lounge. Carriage.
(image credit: TechRadar)
However, I kept running into issues with charging my devices – from my MacBook to the AirPods Pro case. While I had a 100W plug it was being used by my wife, and the battery pack was out of charge. So I had to look for a USB socket.
As I sat under this table, I saw a socket and a USB-A port – which is useless for my Mac. This was also the time my iPhone was hitting the 10% mark, because I was hotspoting a MacBook over 4G, and it was working overtime to download a TV show that we forgot to download before we left. Had gone.
After half an hour, my iPhone went to sleep, and I was playing a quick game of GTA Vice City on Mac. While I was happy with it, I was annoyed that I was banned by the ports around me – there was no last resort, resorts were locked out of me.
(image credit: TechRadar)
On one hand, it shows how fast technology is advancing. We all need to charge our devices, but there comes a point where these ports become obsolete, and unable to keep up with the huge capacity and charging speed required for your iPhone, tablet and gaming console.
On the other hand, our journey showed how industries like hospitality can leverage their investment in USB-A-only to keep the customer happy for so long. Eventually, someone who uses a smartphone infrequently for a moment will notice that their wire doesn’t fit the USB-A port in a hotel, and that’s when it’s going to cause problems.
So do trains and hotels replace these ports with USB-C until the next port comes to replace it? Of course not, it will be a huge expense and it takes months to do it over and over again in hotel rooms and train coaches. But something must be done to make sure others, in the same situation as me, don’t feel deprived or frustrated by the lack of available ports for their USB-C-only devices.
