Comment by johnisgood
2 months ago
I read it as "USC-B ports can't be used for charging" (this is exactly what was said), but if I plug my phone into these ports, my phone will charge, and there can be data transfer as well.
2 months ago
I read it as "USC-B ports can't be used for charging" (this is exactly what was said), but if I plug my phone into these ports, my phone will charge, and there can be data transfer as well.
Yes, and that's not what I meant. I'm sorry for the confusion, but I have clarified already. I meant charging the host from the peripheral, which could be a wall charger, a battery pack, a monitor, etc. I was thinking of laptops when I wrote the original comment.
I also elaborated that, even when we consider the other direction, i.e. host-to-peripheral charging, many USB-C ports on PCs only provide baseline USB power levels (aka "slow charging"). The implication (that I now make explicit) is that such poor charging performance would not justify removing all other ports from the computer. I didn't mention this originally, because I didn't think of it then, but now that you have brought it up, I would add it to my argument.
The crux of that argument was: USB-C as the only port type is acceptable as long as those USB-C ports are full featured. That means (again, to be explicit) that they support Thunderbolt, DisplayPort, and bidirectional USB-PD (aka "fast charging"), though obviously one of those directions is not applicable to hosts that have no battery (e.g. desktops).
In other words, if the USB-C ports are no better than USB-A ports, then they are not good enough to take the place of other, dedicated port types.