USB 3.0 not in smartphones or tablets for a year yet!

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Monday, 09 January 2012 16:18

Opinion and Analysis

Unless Apple pops a Thunderbolt port into the iPad 3 or the iPhone 4G/5, which seems unlikely, it looks like we'll have to wait until at least the end of 2012 or sometime in early 2013 before tablets and smartphones are at least able to offer a mobile version of USB 3.0 connectivity.

Your next tablet or smartphone may well have a quad-core processor, but thanks to the much higher power requirements of transferring data at very high speeds, USB 3.0 isn't coming until the end of the year at the earliest for these devices, and won't be as fast as their full-powered USB 3.0 cousins.

The USB Association hasn't listed any announcement at its website yet, but CIO Magazine's report quotes Rahmam Ismail, CTO of the USB Implementers Forum at CES 2012 noting that the USB 3.0 port for smartphones and tablets will likely be MicroUSB port based due to its smaller size than regular USB 3.0 ports.

This is especially important with slim notebooks having ever thinner profiles that has seen VGA ports eliminated in preference for thinner, better video connectivity, along with slower USB 3.0 speeds than for regular desktop and notebook computers. 

Mr Ismail explained that would normally take 15 minutes with USB 2.0 would only take 1 minute and ten seconds with USB 3.0 at a faster rate of 100 MBps (megabytes per second) or 800 Mbps (megabits per second).

That's fast, but not as fast as the 5 Gbps 'raw performance' that USB 3.0 is rated at, but uses much less power than the desktop USB 3.0 standard. There are Windows 7 tablets with USB 3.0 ports, but these aren't iPad 2 or Galaxy Tab 10.1 thin, they are usually effectively full powered notebooks in tablet size.

Thus the need for a slim, mobile version of the standard that still dramatically improves transfer speeds when today's ARM-powered ultra slim tablets and smartphones are connected to a computer's USB 3.0 port at much faster than USB 2.0 speeds, with the only main issue being the fact we'll still have to wait around a year for tablets and smartphones to get it.

Ultrabooks will naturally be sporting Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 connections, along with HDMI, and with Thunderbolt to ExpressCard/34 adapters on sale, connectivity options will be endless for more regular Windows or Mac OS X Lion powered computers, and those running Linux too if all the drivers are available.

Continued on page two, please read on!