The thing is, making a 5v-only device PD-compliant is literally one resistor. It costs well under a penny.

It's pure ignorance, not a decision, but the lack of one. Lack of caring, lack of having an actual engineer involved, just slapping an oval-shaped port into a product where a trapezoidal port had been, and blindly thinking that magically makes it spec-compliant.

Or not thinking about the spec at all.

I return these devices too. Lots of them. My e-commerce returns over the last year are probably 50% PD non-compliance, 50% all other defects combined.

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helterskelter 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There's an otherwise decent shortwave radio out there that was originally charged with a micro-usb, then they released a "new" USB-C model...except it will only charge with a 5V brick because they literally just swapped out the ports. Really annoying.

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dabluecaboose 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Oh man, please tell me it wasn't the CC GP-7. I have the micro version and have been hemhawwing about updating it.

	▲	helterskelter a minute ago \| parent [-]
		You mean the CountyComm? If so, I'm 99% certain that radio is a rebranded Tecsun PL-360, which is in fact a 5V. I love Tecsun why they would cheap out on the USB-C refresh is beyond me. https://www.tecsun-radios.com/product/pl360-radio-receiver/

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dotancohen 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'd imagine that a significant portion of the shortwave radio community is capable of soldering in the two resistors.

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exmadscientist 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's two resistors, actually. But they cost $0.0003 each (that's 0.03¢, or just around 3,333 of them for US$1) from distributors. Though there appears to be a bit of a stock crunch right now.

So... yeah.

The bigger issue is not really the parts cost, it's the fact that it adds an extra part to the design that has to be purchased and tracked and assembled and blah blah blah. This is the real reason it often gets left off on the bottom-of-the-barrel products. Many times there is no other use for a 5.1kΩ resistor. And it might not even fit well at the cheap sizes (0603 or 0402), and going down to 0201-capable assembly factory flow just for these two resistors is not going to happen.

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dotancohen 2 hours ago | parent [-]

These companies are not manufacturing the device PCBAs, that is done by dedicated companies such as Flex. The PCBA manufacturing companies have warehouses of different resistors, and 5.1kΩ is extremely common. In fact, most PCB resistor values are quite flexible, to save on SKUs (in practice, to save on loading another carrier on the PnP machine) often if a specific resistor needs a specific value then all (or most of) the other resistors will use that value.

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exmadscientist 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I was speaking a little more towards the AliExpress end of things, which is a sadly high proportion of the devices out there. For the midsize CMs and up, you're right, they've got piles and piles of stuff and don't charge by the reel loaded.

5.1k is a surprising resistor value, a lot of modern designs don't really have anything else in that area. I'm often not able to combine anything with it when I'm cost reducing. 4.7k, sure, but there aren't a lot of those either... 2.2k is just not close enough a lot of the time (or ends up as 1k), and same for 10k. So, sadly, it often does stand alone.

	▲	dotancohen 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Interesting, thank you. That is an end of the market that I have not seen. I wonder if PD will cause a comeback of that value as more and more legacy device refreshes move to USB-C plugs.

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megous 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Only if the device's consumption is < 2.5W, which is what a USB 2.0 computer USB-A's data port limit is. Anything above that, compliance gets a bit more involved and complicated.