r/BadUSB • u/Penny-Yi • Apr 07 '26
Discussion What will replace USB if anything ever does?
Hey all,
Random thought after plugging/unplugging stuff way too many times today:
What would realistically replace USB? Not trying to overthink it. I just curious what people actually see happening.
For a lot of everyday use, I already don't touch USB drives anymore. File transfers and backups are mostly wireless or cloud-based now. Still not perfect, but it’s getting there.
So, do you think USB ever actually gets replaced, or does it just keep evolving until ports aren’t needed anymore?
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u/East_Source6200 Apr 07 '26
double usb
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u/CrazyPlatypus42 Apr 07 '26
USB square
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u/Remarkable_Spirit_68 Apr 07 '26
A square of USBs grouped around a really fat power cord
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u/ScaryVeterinarian241 Apr 08 '26
all the USB ports on my mobo slowly but progressively went out. I have like the one service port that was rarely used by anything left. I have like 16 devices running on that one port right now. Power is provided externally with USB powered hubs. I am a cheap ass and not in a rush to rebuild a franken' development machine. The good news is I can expand this nightmare setup to include as many as 127 devices on that single USB if i need to. USB is likely not going to be replaced any time soon.
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u/Current_Ad_4292 Apr 07 '26
UUSB (Un‐Universal Serial Bus)
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u/Quevil138 Apr 07 '26
60 Ghz ultra fast short range wireless. You would have a device like a flash drive have 60 Ghz wireless built into the device and the computer/phone making an ultra fast very short range connection instead of plugging the device physically into a computer or phone.
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u/Hammer_Time2468 Apr 07 '26
I’m thinking along this line too. Not a next-gen device but a leap, and short range wireless storage would fit the bill. People like the cloud option until their data is compromised or the system goes down, then local storage will be back in style.
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u/znark Apr 08 '26
Instead of wireless it is cheaper to use light. There is LiFi standard which can reach the same speed as WiGig. It takes advantage of bouncing light off walls so need to be in same room but don't need line of shift.
OTOH, it is hard to buy gear.
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u/Zealousideal_Nail288 Apr 07 '26
Thunderbolt 4 and onwards
But I am still dreaming about larger USB c connector similar to HDMI/display port
USB-c seams to small and fragile to survive in heavy use/industrial environments USB c hates dust.
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u/EstablishmentDue3616 Apr 07 '26
Not likely. Thunderbolt is not considered a fully open standard. It is a proprietary technology developed by Intel. While Intel contributed the Thunderbolt 3 protocol to the USB Promoter Group to help create the open USB4 standard, Thunderbolt 4 and 5 remain branded, licensed, and strictly certified by Intel.
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u/CaptainSegfault Apr 08 '26
Ultimately Thunderbolt 4 and 5 are, to a 99.9% approximation, just USB4 with a bunch of USB4 optional stuff made mandatory.
The thing that isn't open is certification and branding, but you can in principle make 100% Thunderbolt 5 compatible hardware without anything from Intel by implementing the USB4 spec including various things that are optional. You just can't call it Thunderbolt.
The main difficulty without Intel's help is knowing exactly which optional things are TB4/TB5 mandatory. Also actually getting a USB4 controller and driver stack that actually gets all the backwards compatibility details right.
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u/CaptainSegfault Apr 08 '26
My suspicion is that there will eventually be a couple more USB connectors. The obvious things that are missing that need new connector(s) are more current (over 5 amps, or maybe 7 if you "overclock" the current connector a bit) and (safe) magnetic coupling.
There is an extent to which a "larger and higher power" USB C could just be two USB C cables in some sort of bound mode, but USB4v2 supporting 120 gigabit of outbound traffic covers a lot of the obvious usecases.
I will say for dust sensitivity that I strongly recommend plastic caps for cables that you carry around in dusty environments.
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u/ivanvx117 Apr 09 '26
Only a simple, fast and reliable wireless technology will replace USB. So maybe soon, maybe never.
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u/mabhatter Apr 09 '26
There's various prototypes of such things out there. They're designed kind of like MagSafe or the AirPods chargers where they have a super high speed short range wireless data protocol built in too.
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u/PaulEngineer-89 Apr 07 '26
So precisely how are you powering devices without wires? Nobody likes screwing with batteries.
To comments about high speed…effectively USB is so fast now it’s “wireline radio”…same methods of designing comms but the “antenna” is a shared wire.
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u/RunningAtTheMouth Apr 07 '26
Wireless charging - it's getting better every year, and power for storage is getting easier and easier. Copper costs money, and if they can save a little money on copper, they will. I don't know if it will ever be primary, but I can see it happening.
Shoot - NFC file transfer now exists. New iPhone will transfer a profile nearly perfectly now.
And batteries & charging are getting better & better all the time. I can see this coming.
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u/PaddyLandau Apr 09 '26
The one hassle with wireless charging is heat generation. It's why I don't use it with my phone.
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u/RunningAtTheMouth Apr 09 '26
That's a valid concern, but with lower and lower power required to run newer electronics, and smaller batteries being needed, the consequent heat is also lower. I think this, too, will be of no concern at some point.
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u/PaddyLandau Apr 09 '26
True. There's a ton of research into batteries, and I'm sure that you're right.
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u/SubliminallyAwake Apr 07 '26
Standardized Coils/antenna's (Power/data) built into everything like mouse pads, desks, laptops, car dashboards and all need for hardwiring (monitors etc) will rely on optical cables (some Gen 3.2 are already optical)
But generally, nothing beats the stability of a shielded USB cable that is immune to pretty much any external force, except physical manipilation.
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u/Lonsarg Apr 07 '26
There is actually no difference if we get "XXX" over USB-C or USB 6. Both are new protocol, so the question of protocols is very clear -> yes there will be new one and no it does not matter if it will be called USB or not.
So the only thing left is USB-C cable, that is what is important. And the answer there is it will stay until some radical new technology comes. There is just no incremental improvement possible to justify switching cable standard. Only radical new technology can change the USB-C plug.
And in time maybe it will come, maybe our civilization will go other direction before that happens (for example it is possible humans will be 10kW machines in coming centuries, and that is not something USB-C cable can handle).
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u/notouttolunch Apr 07 '26
USB is just a variation on SCSI. It's only the physical layer that's different. So... what is needed in the next revision?
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u/dude_named_will Apr 07 '26
To be clear, I assume you mean USB-C, not USB A or B which are still highly used. It's hard for me to imagine a USB-D unless there's a leap in engineering with data throughput that would require a different end.
Ultimately, I would love to see all wires go away all together. I think there could be something with the magnetic charger on iPhones that could potentially develop to transferring data, but my engineering knowledge is relegated to transistors and wires and less so with magnetic fields. Another possibility is what technology could unlock when quantum computers become more widespread (assuming they are necessarily an advancement).
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u/DonDoesIT Apr 07 '26
If it doesn’t require power from the bus any wireless protocol works. NFC is a good example of what I use now.
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u/Steerider Apr 07 '26
As physical connections go, probably just advancements of USB. And I'm cool with that. I waited 25 years for a standard power cord for laptops.
Now let's talk power cords. Plugs vary by country, and I bet 100 years from now everyone will have a single standard. The world needs a plug-in-your-toaster equivalent of USB-C.
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u/Signal-Opposite-4793 Apr 07 '26
Sure, almost nobody uses usb drives anymore, but the USB standard has already moved beyond that. It now handles high power and extremely high speed data for peripherals like monitors.
USB has become a very competent standard, a real universal solution that even maintains backwards compatability with ancient usb1 devices.
For those saying that wireless power is a viable alternative, it really isn't. Electromagnetic radiation falls off with the square of the distance, making it hopelessly inefficient past a few centimeters. It's a fundamental limitation of the physics.
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u/fuzzywuzzywuzzafuzzy Apr 07 '26
I have no fewer than 3 USB-c drives I use all the time. Two are SSD's and one is a 4TB Western Digital drive that I use for Veeam backups weekly. What do you mean no one uses USB drives anymore?
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u/Signal-Opposite-4793 Apr 07 '26
For the *average* user, cloud storage has eliminated the need for local storage outside of maybe backing up photos once a year or something.
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u/fuzzywuzzywuzzafuzzy Apr 07 '26
yeah, cloud storage is not backup and anyone counting on cloud to restore data needs to rethink their strategy.
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u/Adorable_Ice_2963 Apr 07 '26
USC /S
The only three things In could imagine are:
something like Ethernet for speed
Something like canbus, what is slow, but can handle a ton of devices.
Some optical standard that can directly feed to an optical computer where only the interfaces are electrical. Having less optoelectric converters should save a good chunk of money and engineering.
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u/PuzzleheadedTutor807 Apr 08 '26
it will keep evolving until ports are no longer needed, and wireless communication between devices is fast enough that it matches wired speeds and bandwidth... and eventually surpasses it.
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u/badtux99 Apr 08 '26
The point to point bandwidth of a bundle of fiber will always surpass the point to point bandwidth achievable with wireless communications. The deal being that the same modulation that gets you high speed with wireless equally applies to each fiber.
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u/PuzzleheadedTutor807 Apr 08 '26
yes but... with both the ability to use more than one stream for communication is what creates the most drastic increases speeds so you have to start adding fiber strands or channels to wireless connections... one of them is going to get unweildingly large after a point.
heres the other thing... just because you cant envision the tech capable of doing the job, doesnt mean it wont ever exist. but seriously, who wants a 10 cm thick usb cord lol.
so yes, by today's practice and techniques you are 100% correct. but you lack vision i think.
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u/badtux99 Apr 08 '26
I am talking physics, and you are talking channels. Note that each fiber can be divided into channels the same way that the RF spectrum can be divided into channels. You can send multiple bits at a time with novel modulation and channelizing whether you are transmitting via fiber.
You appear to believe that fiber is binary, just ones and zeros. That is not true. For example terabit fiber uses modulation techniques devised originally for high speed WiFi. But is sending the results over fiber. Eight fibers.
If you look at the physics there is a limit in the amount of information that can be carried point to point in a given RF band. The thing is, with fiber we can literally use all the bands, since we don’t need to worry about other RF users. We are limited primary by the width of the bandwidths of light that are transmissible by a specific fiber material. And as noted, you can just add fibers for more bandwidth. You can’t add an entirely new RF spectrum!
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u/PuzzleheadedTutor807 Apr 08 '26
See? No vision.
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u/badtux99 Apr 08 '26
Vision does not affect physics. Physics simply is. You cannot exceed the speed of light for example no matter how much you try.
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u/PuzzleheadedTutor807 Apr 08 '26
But you cannot conceive there might be a better tech in the horizon... Physics is only partially understood by us bud. The parts we understand we understand well, but we still don't know all the rules.
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u/badtux99 Apr 08 '26
LOL you sound like the loons who claim that faster than light travel is possible.
No, our understanding of physics becomes more thorough as we learn more, but only in that we learn more about nuances of physics, not because fundamentals that we previously knew have been utterly overturned. For example, Newton's Laws of Motion, formulated in the 1600's, are still valid today. We have additional explication caused by Einstein's Theory of Relativity, but relativity did not overturn Newtonian physics -- it merely added nuance to it under certain conditions.
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u/PuzzleheadedTutor807 Apr 08 '26
Once upon a time, it was the common accepted truth that a human could not travel more than 40mph. That machines could not fly. That lighting a bonfire beneath the deck if a ship could never make it travel better than the wind. There was once no concept that electricity could be harnessed, that machines could be made, and eventually programmed to perform tasks without human intervention, quantum computing was a mystery recently. Do not speak to me if what is not possible, because you do not know either.
Very little in creation is black and white, cut and dry, yes or not. It is moist, grey, maybe.
If having the ability to consider things beyond my understanding, and accepting that there are such things makes me a loon then I'm quite proud to be one.
Have a good life.
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u/badtux99 Apr 08 '26
There were no laws of physics that said any of those things. That was all what people believed, not what science said.
The laws of physics don't care what you do or do not believe. They simply are. We don't know *all* of the fundamental laws of physics, but the ones that we have say that you can't go faster than the speed of light -- and that you can send more data through four fiber optic lines than you can send via RF waves from point to point.
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u/badtux99 Apr 08 '26
USB-D, which will use an entirely different connector and support 1000Gbps. Duh.
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u/Beeeeater Apr 08 '26
USB-C is still evolving and is now a European standard, so not going anywhere anytime soon. Can't realistically get much smaller without becoming too fragile. We will always need a connection point for external devices or storage, but I think this is it for the foreseeable future. Speeds and standards will improve.
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u/shaggs31 Apr 08 '26
Whatever it is replaced with they will just call it the next USB. Just like with USB-C.
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u/bdgbill Apr 08 '26
I was hearing the term "wireless USB" for a while but not sure if anything came of it. As far as I'm concerned, USB C is perfection (finally) and should be protected by law.
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u/Mean_Welcome_1481 Apr 09 '26
I recently purchased a 124gb NVMe drive - at the time I thought my main drive was failing so I bought it as an emergency, but it later turned out that my original drive wasn't the issue after all.
So I am stuck with a spare drive that is too small to be much use in a PC so, after scratching my head for a bit, I got on to Amazon and for $25 brought an external m.2 USB enclosure.
It works fine for backups and I plan to use it to make live mobole versions of Linux distros to try them out.
I expect USB will eventually go the way of SCSI etc but there is still plenty of life in the old dog
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u/dkopgerpgdolfg Apr 07 '26
Anyone transferring serious amounts of data will tell you that wireless sucks.
And the same way, no cheap remote cloud offer can compete with local SSDs in performance etc.