Edit: see comments for clarifications.

I am probably late on this one, but god damn this is one nasty trick by Philips.

Context; I recently decided to upgrade my shaver, from a Philips One Blade to Philips an all-in-one-trimmer-7000. As you can see on the pictures below, they changed the charger for the adapter by maybe 1–2 millimetres, just so the old charger could not be used by the old charger. Now, this normally isn’t a big deal, but with the new trimmer, the charger is USB-A only. Where’s the previous one had the plug on it instead. To me this is mildly infuriating as I know need to get an extra adapter just to charge my shaver in the bathroom. They had the exact same design for the chargers, yet changed it just slightly so they wouldn’t be able to be reused? Why… Philips… why?

Edit: many good points in the comments! I don’t know how to manually check the voltage, but seems like folks figured it out in the comments too. Should have just been USB-C!

  • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.todayEnglish
    29·
    8 months ago

    Are you going to remove outlets and strip walls every hotel you ever visit to check for data? Because that somehow sounds both sane and also unhinged, good luck with that.

    • thantik@lemmy.worldEnglish
      61·
      8 months ago

      Why would I need to? 110v outlets aren’t regularly equipped with Data transfer capability. And last I checked, there weren’t any USB-C -> 110v data transfer dongles available…highly doubt a hotel is gonna retrofit them for collecting your shaving habits.

      Because that somehow sounds both sane and also unhinged, good luck with that.

      You’re projecting a bit much.

      • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.todayEnglish
        210·
        8 months ago

        Your ignorance of the potential for harm due to it’s unlikelihood makes me think electrical engineering might be the wrong discipline for you.

        • thantik@lemmy.worldEnglish
          91·
          8 months ago

          I think you may have a horrible misunderstanding about how the real world works. As well as the specifics of USB-PD, and other such things; like paranoia, and schizophrenia.

          Nothing you just said has any basis in reality or reasonability. Most people charge devices off of USB-PD power bricks, which are not going to be converted to transfer data across 110v lines for the purposes of collecting the data from your shaver. The amount of infrastructure and added cost that would bring is absolutely moronic at scale, and much more easily done through wifi or bluetooth, without even bothering with data-over-power.

          Amazon has the “Sidewalk” network, and you wouldn’t even need to do anything fancy other than put a $2 ESP32 or NRF into the shaver to communicate and transmit data…forget trying to hijack it over USB…

          • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.todayEnglish
            29·
            8 months ago

            So you flat out do not believe that USBs have data capabilities as a blanket statement?

            • mexicancartel@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
              51·
              8 months ago

              Bro usb has data transfer capabilities. But if you connect to a power brick, which basically converts AC to lower volt DC and delivet power. It might be a problem only if you directly connect usb to wall withouth the power brick

              • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.todayEnglish
                2·
                8 months ago

                Ah my apologies, when you said “power brick” you meant a converter for a wall outlet. That term isn’t standard in my region so I assumed you meant an outlet with USB capability, which is what I was discussing. They’re actually becoming very common, so I was expressing my distrust in making them a new standard.