Graham Sutherland / Polynomial @gsuberland@chaos.social
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people talk about how USB-C standardisation saved us from needing different cables for stuff, but I also feel like a lot of people forget that "I might need USB Micro A, USB-C, or Lightning depending on which phone it is" was already orders of magnitude better than the insanity we used to deal with in the 2000s.

these are two real phone cables that I used to own. they only worked with a specific range of Sony Ericsson phones. (and don't get me started on charger cradles)

An aux audio output cable for an old Sony Ericsson phone. It's got a TRS on one end and a big rectangular connector on the other end with two big plastic prongs poking out of it for retention, and a bunch of leaf spring contacts. What, you thought old phones had headphone jacks? Nope, it wasn't a guarantee even back then. Although it's not like you could stream music either. All we had was WAP, and I don't mean the song.Roughly the same cable again, except the weird proprietary connector goes to a barrel jack, then plugs into a receptacle that goes to a little box, which then goes to a USB cable. I still don't know what the little box does. Maybe some sort of boost converter? We used to charge phones by putting them in a charger cradle (remember those?) and I think mine ran off a 9V wallwart, so a boost converter would make some sense.
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