Can’t wait see Anker to start incorporating this into their products in 2021. 2021 is already looking better than 2020.
USB 4.0
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I would accept USB 4.0 with open arms…but judging by the way manufacturers S L O W L Y added USB-C support, I’d bet they would do the same here and take years to transition 
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Wonder how long until we actually start seeing it
I bet years. You can blame Apple and their slow, proprietary Lightning connector. What Apple does, others follow. Even though their connector sucks.
Glad the EU is stepping in: https://www.techradar.com/news/your-next-iphone-may-use-usb-c-instead-of-a-lightning-cable-thanks-to-this-ruling
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If you want to attempt to predict when, ask what it solves you can’t do today and then look for how many people want it. Technology can make things which consumers don’t need.
As far as I can tell, the main difference is it bring Thuderbolt under USB, so no difference to those who have Thunderbolt.
Thunderbolt doubles USB 3.1 20Gbps to 40Gbps.
So ask yourself how many people need more than 20Gbps who don’t already have Thunderbolt. I suggest that is very few. It would mostly help media professionals who deal with raw 4K video who transfer between a wide variety of devices who would eventualy get 40Gbps between everything.
Fast data transfer means more data, so you’ll need for example a 1TB iPad to be able to store so much data that you’d notice the halving of transfering 500GB of their 1TB iPad reduced from 200 seconds to 100 seconds? Would you pay for that? If so, how much woud you pay? Should all iPad owners pay more because a few want to save a minute? Those are the questions to ask to predict when USB 4 moves mainstream.
Thunderbolt is an Intel technology and it makes sense to have it for very fast cpu systems with large fast SSDs internal and external, but the argument you need it to a phone or tablet which never be as fast a cpu is pretty weak in my view. Therefore, I think you’ll only see USB 4 in smaller devices when it costs a few Cents more than USB 3, which would take years.
As a photographer and music editor, yeah I want faster data speeds. I also want ONE universal connection. USB-C does both. There’s a big difference when offloading GBs of image files or WAV file, say a difference between 90MB/sec to 500MB/sec and higher…which speeds up my workflow.
Files are getting larger as we progress. If people are fine with antiquated slow tech, so be it for THEM…but don’t slow me down.
Apple is playing catch up, only because they are being forced too (by EU) but they’re going extremely slow, with their proprietary slow tech.
USB 3.1 is 20Gbps, Thunderbolt 40Gbit is the main difference in USB 4.
20Gbps = 20000Mbps = 2500MBps.
So if you are saying 90MB/s to 500MB/s then the problem is not USB, there is a non-USB bottleneck in your path reducing by at least 80%. Typically (*) that is portable systems slower flash storage to reduce power and heat issues. Such issues are solved in PCs with 600W power and big fans permitting very fast memory, gpu, cpu, SSD. If all you did was replace USB 3.1 with 4 in such a non-PC system then USB would reduce from using 20% of its capability to 10%.
I’m only doing math. Math is the only way to predict.
(*) I am using wire speed, filesystem overhead not included, real life would be about 2/3rds but my calculation is valid for order-of-magnitude conclusions.
A huge number of even modern, USB-C type devices are still only using USB 2.0 for the data stream. Just isn’t worth going up. In this case I think you are spot on, and this is a tech that will only be relevant to very fast hard drives and reasonably powerful computer systems for a lot of years.
@Dez_S even your USB-C connections on many end devices are still only using USB 2 speeds. It is a choice they make to save some money, and a sensible one because many of those devices can’t use the higher speeds anyway.
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We can have fun making predictions. I’d have to find current typical portable device filesystem benchmark, apply Moore’s Law then predict when USB is the bottleneck. Not hard to calc once I get a good present benchmark…
Searching now… can only find iPad 2020 cpu gpu benchmarks, not I/O…
If I copy on my Huawei 2018 technology tablet between flash, SD , I never get any combination higher than 50MB/s, so such a device could never benefit from more than (50MBps x 8bits / 1000M * 2 filesytem overheads) 0.8Gbits/s. USB 2 is 0.5Gpbs , USB 3 4.8Gbps so in this example if I were to benchmark USB 2 vs 3 I’d probably see a small performance increase, but none from USB 4.
Using Moore’s Law, it would take 4 years before USB 4 would begin to show any measurable benefit in this example device price range.
I could do the calc for iPad if I could find its storage benchmark.
I found this
https://www.iphonebenchmark.net/diskmark_chart.html
But I need to get the read performance.
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I don’t have Thunderbolt and our PCs never reach theoretical speeds. I’m plenty happy with 500mb/sec off my CFExpress card and 800+ mb/sec with a couple of external NVMe SSDs that I have
Only my webcam is using USB 2.0 speeds. You don’t know how my PC is built, which I did the build.
USB-C going forward for every peripheral in my setup.
You said Apple, so we went into the iPad example. Of course PCs can be built for speed, the larger PSU and fans permit it.
The fastest PC is over 8 times faster than the fastest iPad, so obviously PCs will hit usb limits earlier and so have usb 4 earlier than Apple iPads. That was the point.
That’s because the consumers let them.
I could care less about Apple. The subject and point was about USB 4.0 and slow implementation of USB-C.
I’m not part of the Apple sheep, although I do like my iPad Pro.
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I couldn’t do without my iPad Pro either.
Various chats with people including many here (mainly @professor) I don’t think android tablets are quite there yet.
Over Christmas made the move from iPhone to Samsung Galaxy, and so far haven’t looked back.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved my iPhones of the past.
After getting rid of the 8 and buying the11 Pro I was left felling a bit meh, so got rid.
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The iPad Pro 11" I use daily and the only reason I purchased it, is because I had iPads in the past but this one has USB-C. One cable for everything. Hate the Lightning connector/port.
I have always been an Android user. I build PCs and been using Windows since day 1.
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I don’t think anything Google will drive USB 4.0.
Android is mobile optimised, so can never be fast to benefit from faster USB.
Google is directing full larger screens to ChromeOS, so Chromebook, these are Cloud centric, not really locally powerful, so similarly will take a while to benefit from faster USB.
What Google does push is USB-C.
Apple only did lightning to lock into a proprietary money-making scam, and anyone who buys it is funding it. Apple is moving to USB-C but again in a weird way of bundling the most mediocre chargers (opportunity for Anker).
So you’re with Intel, HP, Dell, Lenovo, AMD, Microsoft, being the processing workhorse champions with MPB being a slower expensive alternative.
Fortunately desktops exist, you can tailor to precise needs, 5 times faster than any laptop, 8 times faster than any tablet, and as the bottleneck moves you can peicemeal swap a component.
So these are current best, small to large
- watch- Apple
- phone - Android
- tablet - iPad
- laptop - Windows, MacOS
- desktop - Linux (Ubuntu).
- server - Linux (Debian, CentOS)
Android is making a half effort to get to a full OS with Samsung Dex and Huawei EMUI but I doubt they will succeed, and Apple adding trackpoint support to make iOS a full equivlant to MacOS I also doubt will succeed.