What is purpose of Titan's odd-shaped USB port?

[jaak]

Originally Posted by paravis

More than anything, it's a way for Sprint/HTC/Verizon whomever to make a nice chunk of change off accessories. Proprietary hardware. Forces you to buy outrageously overpriced cables from them.

China has mandated that all cellphones must be compatible with USB chargers. Obviously this doesn't affect the rest of the world but I bet it'll have a great influence on what the rest of the world sees (at least on products that come from China).

Originally Posted by Baffles

My Titan from Sprint came with a miniUSB charger as well. And how is extusb proprietary?

ExtUSB is proprietary to HTC.

[Krayziepop]

Just to make a point about the backwards compatibility... for charging its all good. Try and run internet sharing over it after you have been using a standard mini-usb cable without the adapter for a while... It'll get so sloppy in the port you won't be able to maintain the connection. If you plug a mini-USB into the port out of the box you will see it has a good deal of left/right/up/down play. This will get progressively worse over time if you don't use that damn adapter...

The reason is because of the flat plastic riser in the center of the Mogul's USB port. On a standard mini-USB device there would only be contacts on one side of this riser. The Mogul has contacts on BOTH sides of this plastic tab... Being as there is so much slop when a standard mini-USB cable is used, over time it can begin to wear on that plastic tab and even make it weak enough to break off (been there twice now...) The USB-EXT connector is very snug in the port and puts pressure against both sides of that tab, so it physically can't move around.

Anyway, thats just my two cents on the deal... YMMV as always. I really don't like the design of this port, because I have a hard time keeping track of the adapter dongles. (lost both already...) Whatever though... Thanks for the brilliant idea HTC.