> Oh, it also has two USB-C sockets. A red one for charging, and a black one for using the flashlight's substantial battery as a power bank. I don't know what would happen if you plugged the charger into the wrong socket and don't have the courage to try.
USB-C does a bit of negation before putting our any significant amount of power. There's a "dumb mode" that just uses a pair of half-cent resistors and is fine for up to 3A at 5V, and then the "smart" PD (Power Delivery) mode that does a digital negotiation and can do much higher wattage.
All that is to say that if you plugged the black USB-C into a charging brick it'd probably just fail the negotiation and nothing bad would happen. Both sides would have to be violating the spec for it to be a real hazard.
Annoyingly, some really cheap devices skip out on even the dumb mode resistors to save a penny, and so even though they have USB-C ports, you have to charge them with USB-A to USB-C cables (because USB-A ports always provide power, no negotiation required.)
Those devices are where the cheap Y-cables come in handy, because they usually include the required resistors + give you a USB-A port.
The flashlight comes with an USB A->C charging cable, as do the (low end) smartphones we have (along with USB-A power adapter for the phones). Thus probably no PD negotiation. Right?
A lot of flashlights and cheap gadgets have USB-C port but can only charge from USB-A port. The reason is that they cheaped out on including the resistors that signal legacy USB mode. The USB-C to USB-A cable has the resistors.
The smartphones should have proper USB-C port, I haven't heard of one with charging problems, and included USB-A cable cause cheap.
Aah, yes, the USB-A side always provides power, no negotiation needed for that aspect. There is still supposed to be some level of negotiation before drawing that much current (often just checking resistance, similar to the USB-C "dumb" mode), but obviously the device skipped that also.
USB-C does a bit of negation before putting our any significant amount of power. There's a "dumb mode" that just uses a pair of half-cent resistors and is fine for up to 3A at 5V, and then the "smart" PD (Power Delivery) mode that does a digital negotiation and can do much higher wattage.
All that is to say that if you plugged the black USB-C into a charging brick it'd probably just fail the negotiation and nothing bad would happen. Both sides would have to be violating the spec for it to be a real hazard.
Annoyingly, some really cheap devices skip out on even the dumb mode resistors to save a penny, and so even though they have USB-C ports, you have to charge them with USB-A to USB-C cables (because USB-A ports always provide power, no negotiation required.)
Those devices are where the cheap Y-cables come in handy, because they usually include the required resistors + give you a USB-A port.