The (possible) Existence of 'A Priori Design' Part II:
The Case for USB 2.0

What caused slow adoption of USB 3.0, and its slickly-named USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10 Gbps/10W+) successor? The press releases spoke of a new class of connectivity that could transfer xxGB of your favorite TV shows from one device to another in moments, not hours. The messaging struck hard at a lived experience where data transfers were just too slow. Consumers got the message. We waited with open arms. Why didn’t the industry deliver? Perhaps we had already figured out the 'Waiter's Corkscrew' of all connection types.

The cockroach of connectivity eats its young

In 2026, many tech industry folks compare USB 2.0 to a cockroach that survives evolutionary Armageddon. While successfully outliving hugely popular connectivity standards, most notably Apple's propriety and exclusive FireWire, USB 2.0 has simultaneously fought off competition from its younger super-charged USB 3.0 and USB 4.0 brethren. Compare the relative merits of each generational spec. Using 'data transfer throughput' and 'power delivery' as the two primary metrics, USB 2.0 is so 'theoretically' out-gunned, it's palpably embarrassing.

Today, USB 2.0, despite its 2001 vintage, remains the dominant force in hardware connectivity, maintaining its position as the standard of choice for everything from beard trimmers and sex toys, to professional-grade audio gear and the very latest medical equipment.

In part, the lack of enthusiasm within the industry was due to slow chipset integration with Intel in particular seemingly dragging their feet. Despite being a major voice and driver of USB 3.0 development in 2008 when the standard was finalized, Intel didn’t integrate the standard into its CPU platforms (or PCH) until 2012, and seeing as Intel also offered no discrete USB 3.0 controller chip in that period, the entire PC manufacturing supply chain relied on 3rd party vendors such as NEC (Renesas), ASMedia, VIA and Etron.

Without neat, pain-free integration within the CPU platform itself, OEMs had to fork out for an expensive additional USB 3.0 controller IC that added significant cost. The additional IC not only impacted power delivery and cooling design, but also required additional thermal and electrical testing - all using firmware and integration support from a 3rd party IC company your engineers had no previous relationship with. In short, USB 3.0 sounded prohibitively ‘mafan’ in the corridors of power in Taiwan and China?

Also, for the broader PC industry (inc. Apple) USB 2.0 had become so baked into the platform (the old eggs within a cake analogy springs to mind), that integrating a wholly new data, power and physical port standards actually required substantial time and effort. Even the new blue USB 3.0 cables and their more complex wiring, heat-resistant cabling, and certification standards meant much more work, and a higher BOM at a time when laptop manufacturers globally were experiencing lower margins.

Another, possibly salient explanation is that most of the world didn’t really need USB 3.0. Even in 2026, the vast majority of connectivity scenarios DO NOT require data transfer speeds, or power delivery beyond what USB 2.0 offers. Add the additional hurdles and resources that USB 3.0 integration demands, it’s easy to see why USB 2.0 is alive and well in most corners of our lives, including our smartphones.

Possible impact of VR/XR, or not

While keeping a watchful eye on the AR/VR space over the years, noting its time in the spotlight through 2015-2016, and subsequent failure to find any real momentum in the mainstream, it occurs to me that maybe it was just a little ahead of its time. The games weren't really up to much with developers arguably failing to really adapt and deliver an AAA-class VR title that would really drive adoption. Plus the computational power required to run a genuine VR experience remained prohibitively expensive - a situation exacerbated further by the rise of Crypto and the huge subsequent surge in GPU pricing.

Opting for an alternative path to full virtual immersion, developers like META, XREAL and several others propose the idea of VR glasses that you just plug and use a modern smartphone (plug ’n play never gets old). The devices in our pockets today are pretty slick pieces of kit that can pump out HD quality content with relative ease.

It’s a preposterously simple concept - your smartphone has a small 7-8 inch screen, why not hook up these glasses and you can have a massive 48” HD virtual screen instead? To most punters it sounds like a pretty cool way to enjoy content. Even if we admit it is pretty far from being a true virtual world experience, it’s at least a step in the right direction, and an interesting one at that. 

The recent XREAL x ROG Collab makes absolute sense from a gaming perspective. It also makes sense that mobile gaming and VR find themselves tied together in this way. Portable gaming devices like ROG ALLY and Steam Deck are primed for the immersion that virtual displays can provide. Why not smartphones? So what’s holding things back?

You’ve guessed it… USB 2.0.

Legacy connectivity and the new smartphone era

Quick fact to consider. The vast majority of smartphones in use today use data transfer technology dating back 25 years. 

The overall profile of a decent quality mid-range smartphone is certainly impressive. The processors use the latest high-performance multi-core designs manufactured on the latest power-efficient 4nm node. The memory is fast LPDDRX5, the storage is fast UFS, the display is an incredibly vibrant HDR-capable, 120Hz OLED, the battery uses new hybrid materials to extend life and improve charging times. The camera is a work of scientific genius featuring a massive Sony sensor and custom optics. There’s only one minor issue…it uses USB 2.0.

USB 2.0 means slow data read and write speeds, slower data transfers and limited power delivery to external devices such as VR glasses. In fact your smartphone cannot independently power a virtual screen, or any other screen because it has no support for high definition video output (DisplayPort Alt Mode) over USB, a headline feature of USB 3.0.

Consider also. Stretching as far back as 2007, all iPhones used USB 2.0 via their proprietary Apple Lightning connector. Today, of Apple’s latest batch of iPhone variants only are USB 3.0 capable, both are $1,000USD+. While many of this year’s flagship Pixel, Galaxy, Find, and other Android phones do now integrate full USB 3.0 support, the unfortunate truth is that the upper-mid and mid-range tiers below do not. 

A comfortable mobile triumvirate

The idea of an affordable USB 3.0-capable smartphone for younger demographics remains a pipe dream in 2026, but the underlying costs and engineering challenges are only part of the story. The smartphone processor industry today is utterly dominated by a triumvirate of Apple, Qualcomm and MediaTek who collectively account for a massive 80%+ of the entire global handset market in 2026.

Not surprisingly neither of the three chip makers mentioned above were in any hurry to add USB 3.0 to their system-on-chip recipes just yet. The cynical among us may question the competitive nature of a market with three comfortable players; 

MediaTek, the Taiwan-based king of budget and affordable chips, and more recent success into flagship territory with its Dimensity 9000 series, a high performance chip enjoying design wins with high volume Chinese brands. Qualcomm, the dominant player in the middle and high-end smartphone segment. 

The Qualcomm Snapdragon series mobile chipsets consistently out perform competing Android-compatible mobile chips. The US-based chip juggernaut of ARM-based processor design.

Then there's Apple and the high performance Apple A series processors. Exclusive to Apple iOS and macOS, Apple competes in its own substantial and very lucrative wall mobile segment.

Notably, all the manufacturers above are fabless, securing the latest 4nm and 2nm node manufacturing from TSMC to give them the dominant edge in the mobile processor space.

But wait, I have USB Type-C

I’d wager that 99% of smartphone users (yep, pretty much all of us) have no idea if their phone is USB 2.0 or USB 3.0/3.2 capable. And to be fair most don’t care. Apple’s recent adoption of USB Type-C cable connectors and ports (that btw, it incidentally helped to co-develop with USB-IF) now means that USB has (somewhat stubbornly)  risen to the challenge of its own remit once again - providing a truly universal, non-proprietary connection that we can all enjoy.

Creative marketing departments have however made the most to extoll the virtues of USB Type-C - mostly that it doesn’t drive you insane trying to figure which way around it needs to be. Hallelujah!! I agree. Type-C connectors are great, but they change nothing about which kind of USB connection you are using. Yes, it’s the new kind of connector. No, it’s not remotely the new kind of USB.

The logic? As with PCs, smartphone USB 3.0 integration raises costs and adds additional unwanted technical challenges regarding thermals and power management. The long held argument remains also that few consumers would prioritize data transfer via USB over tradeoffs in battery life, weight, overall size etc. 

And in truth they are correct. Outside of using your smartphone for your pursuits in the world of VR/XR, why does anyone need USB 3.0 - and let’s quietly skip around USB 4.0, the latest heavyweight connection standard to be largely ignored by most of humanity.

Perhaps there’s a certain elegant logic to the simplicity and effective overall utility of USB 2.0. Perhaps there’s a reason it pervades.

USB 2.0: An a priori design candidate?

Let’s go back to our Alien friend and that glass of burgundy. It makes absolute sense to consider the notion that somewhere on that spaceship there’s a bottle opener similar to our own classic design. Design trait similarities would extend to ergomorphic design - handles, seats, pockets.

Note: Relative proportional adjustments considered of course. The alien could be much larger, or indeed smaller than an average human, and therefore the bottle opener could in fact be radically different in size to our own.

When Captain Kirk meets an intelligent alien species and discusses ethics, politics and mating rituals, we expect a vision where ergonomically related errata including props, communicators, screens, interfaces, all seem similar to our own. The alien species would most likely also developed and perfected a universal serial bus, perhaps even one with similar characteristics to our own - both designs seeking optimal balance in terms of power draw, data transfer, media resolution, transmission types and physical connectors. 

Science is the same everywhere. We know this, and we should not be shocked to discover that the concept of a priori design forms an intangible, intergalactic bond that transcends existence.

Or are we invoking shadows on the wall of Plato’s cave? Shadows of concepts, forms held together by logically constructed reasoning.

I’d enjoy wine and I would ask our Alien friend how his sensors interact with the world, the devices and tools that provide the utility to communicate and travel across the vast spaces of our galaxy. I’d ask him if he used USB 2.0.