Umair Mohammad

Tired of making the mistake of inserting wrong end of USB cable into a device? It happens to us all and is very irritating. But don’t worry the solution is on the way in the form of Type-C USB cable. This is the same cable that was announced in December 2013 by USB 3.0 Promoter Group, as reported by us.

This new USB cable is expected to be similar in size to USB 2.0 cables, though it does look smaller in pictures. It will comply with USB 3.1 specification and is expected to come into market by the middle of 2014.

The latest images have appeared courtesy Golem.de and show the cable’s preliminary specifications. These images are an artist render of what the cable could look like when it hits the market. It looks very similar to Apple’s Lightning cable. Like the Lightning connector, the new Type C USB cable will let the user insert any of the two ends without having to worry about the orientation. The cable is expected to have receptacle opening of 8.3 mm x 2.5 mm. The report also suggests that the cable might have transfer speed of up to 10 Gbps.

Type C USB cable will have a future-compatible scalability feature. This will ensure that the cable will compatible with higher transfer speeds of future devices. The slimmer design of this reversible USB cable will also makes it suitable for the emerging product designs.

Since this new cable will not have backward compatibility, it is expected that a lot of compatible connectors and adapters will flood the market. A major benefit of this cable will be that the hardware manufacturers won’t have to worry much about having different USB ports on different devices, such as the microUSB ports seen on smartphones. In turn the slimmer design will also encourage them to develop sleeker devices.

The official spec sheet of the cable is expected to be announced by July, which would mean devices with the new port will start hitting markets in time for the US holiday season.