OnePlus 3 Dash Charge Only Works With OnePlus Cable, Charger

Quick charging, by whatever name the feature is called, has become the band-aid solution to our battery woes while we await the day when newer, better batteries are finally available. Not surprisingly, each OEM or fast charging technology requires the use of a proprietary charger. The OnePlus 3, however, one ups all of those by requiring not just a proprietary charger for its Dash Charge feature to work, it also requires to use of a proprietary cable at, of course, only OnePlus sells.

That's definitely one requirement more than everyone else and perhaps one too many for both consumers and proponents of industry standards. Most simply require a special quick charge charger, while allowing even third party cables to be used.

OnePlus, however, took things one step further. Even if you use the sanctioned charger but not the blessed cable, the OnePlus 3 and the charger will throttle down the output to "regular" (a.k.a. "slow") speeds. Sure, you can actually still charge the smartphone, but without the advertised benefits of Dash Charge.

Company co-founder Carl Pei justified this requirement citing safety and performance considerations. The official OnePlus 3 charger is thicker in order to safely transfer more power over the cable. In case you're wondering why other fast charging solutions don't require the same, it's because OnePlus has opted to develop its own technology instead of adopting existing ones, so its requirements and methods might differ significantly from those.

Regardless of the reason, it will most likely run afoul not only with consumers who will be forced to always buy and use OnePlus' official accessories, but also with industry standards bodies and proponents. Although it doesn't technically block it, OnePlus is practically ensuring that its cable will be the only cable for the OnePlus 3, despite actually using a standard USB-C connector. The new USB-C standard does have its own Power Delivery spec for such uses, but, as it turns out, very few actually do it properly. In fact, OnePlus was actually criticized by Google engineer Benson Leung for implementing its USB C cable incorrectly. Now OnePlus has a fix for that, but it's probably not the answer Leung was expecting.

VIA: Android Authority