Yeah, this is what I was thinking. IIRC the Switch will brick if you use the wrong dock / charger to this day. If Nintendo can get away with it, surely Raspi foundation can, lol.
While I totally understand the dream of “use the same power supply for everything” I really can’t emphasise just how much impact “use the flippin’ official power supply” has in support burden.
The rash of people digging out their dusty old 500mA microUSB chargers for their early Pi’s made “have you tried a good power supply” almost a meme.
The Switch not truly embracing USB Type-C makes me grumpy. I wonder if the - possibly dockless and portable only - Switch 2 will rectify that. Ah- to just use a regular HDMI alt mode cable!
The USB type C spec IS FOLLOWED on the Switch! Nintendo chose to use (or was forced to use due to the Tegra chipset) a little-used mode called MyDP or "Mobility DP" which is a Display Port mode meant for mobile devices.
That Nintendo chose to deviate from the Type-C spec here is another piece of misinformation with an insanely good staying power. People WANT to believe it, so they never check for themselves and they distrust anyone saying otherwise, just as you are distrusting me right now.
I bet more people will go do research to see if I'm right about this than do research to see if they themselves are ever right about anything.
I suspect if they'd chosen a regular DisplayPort or HDMI alt-mode they wouldn't have had to shoulder the burden of claims they deviated from the spec. Granted, engineering constraints may have made that impossible but it's clear that people are seeing a "USB Type-C" port on the Switch and making the assumption that it should work with HDMI or DisplayPort alt modes. Just as people see the "USB Type-C" port on the Pi and make the assumption that any USB Type-C power supply will work. I guess the sooner people unlearn that a USB Type-C port indicates any sort of compatibility with a corresponding USB Type-C connector the better.
MyDP appears to be woefully obscure to the point that this misinformation might just as well be the truth for all the difference it makes.
Dell and Lenovo, and probably some other manufacturers besides, are already playing this confusion to their advantage by releasing first-party docks that are guaranteed to work with their laptops.
> The Switch not truly embracing USB Type-C makes me grumpy.
In the end, it just shows how little standards actually matter to anyone. Are you going to play Smash Bros. on your Playstation? Nope? Then it doesn't matter if they get USB Type-C right or not. Is your school district going to buy a TotallyLegitPi from AliExpress instead of Raspberry Pis? Nope? Then in the end, it doesn't matter. Marketing wins over technical excellence.
The other problem is how incomprehensibly complex the Type C standard is. Another comment thread says it's 300 pages. Nobody is ever going to get that right unless you ship someone a conformance kit and it flashes green to show 100% compliance. That is the fault of the USB consortium, not the individual implementers that couldn't get every detail in 300 pages of technical documentation right. You can't throw Postel's Law away and expect your standard to work. A lesson for us all!
The problem is if my son or daughter want to play on the switch while the rest of the family is using the TV, they can't plug in for power, so they've got about 2-3 hours before it takes around the same time to charge (I don't really know how long it takes to charge, because they'll keep unplugging it to check the charge level). If it actually was USB-C compliant, I could hand them a cable and charger they could use from the couch, but nope. I'm not going to replace the Switch if the kids break it, and likewise don't plan on replacing if I break it, and if using a non Nintendo charger purportedly voids the warranty on a standard USB-C spec, not going to chance it. Also, not going to funnel Nintendo extra money for a blessed charger.
Using a third party USB Type-C charger on the switch has NEVER caused damage to a Switch and does not void the warranty.
The Switch supports the Type-C Power Delivery spec as well as Qualcomm's QuickCharge spec -- any type-C charger will work, and some will charge faster than others.
> IIRC the Switch will brick if you use the wrong dock / charger to this day.
No. Only one dock ever provably bricked the Switch, and no charger ever has.
The bricking in question actually fried the PMIC due to a software bug on the dock side that was triggered when new functionality/behavior was added to the Switch with a firmware update.
No known dock or charger will damage a Switch today. I've tried hundreds of chargers and even the cheapest $15 docks I find on AliExpress, like this one: https://m.aliexpress.com/item/32832952544.html
It is amazing how long people will keep repeating bad information, and just assume it's true without ever checking to verify that what they are about to say is true. I see it a lot, especially when people complain about Microsoft Windows.
I believe the Switch works fine if you plug a macbook charger directly into it (I do this frequently with no problem), but it may break if you plug a macbook charger into the Switch's dock and power the Switch through that.
Anecdotal evidence does not make a counterexample. After a quick internet search, you will find several USB-C chargers and docks which have reportedly bricked Nintendo Switch devices.
No you won't. Only a single dock has ever bricked the Switch, and the vendor of that dock (Nyko) replaced switches that were bricked.
There is no shortage of people who spout off about old news as if it is still current who say that there are still docks that brick a Switch, and I've tried them all, trying to prove them right, and all I get is proof that they're wrong.
I've tried hundreds of chargers and probably a dozen docks on my three Switches, and all three of them are still working just fine.
