USB 3.0 arriving to mobile devices by end-2012: faster charging, transfer speeds of up to 800Mbps
Ever wondered why (micro)USB 3.0 ports haven’t yet arrived on smartphones and tablets? The bigger power drain might be one of the reasons, but what matters is that the higher-speed USB 3.0 standard will land on mobile devices by the end of 2012 or in early 2013, the USB Implementers Forum said at CES.
Both smartphones and tablets will get microUSB 3.0 ports but sadly the speeds will be a far-cry from the 5Gbps promised in the raw specification. On mobile devices, you’re more likely to get speeds around 800 megabits per second.
"What takes 15 minutes will roughly take 1 minute and 10 seconds," Rahman Ismail said of the USB Implementers Forums explained. The current USB 2.0 specification allows for much lower speeds.
Battery charging will also be much faster with the new standard. The new standard will be back-compatible with USB 2.0.
As to the future, the USB organization is looking to make the size of the port even smaller, as we see that all technology is shrinking in size and the USB port might be one barrier on that way of miniaturization.
source: PCWorld
Image courtesy of Maximum PC
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