Here is the adapter for these outlet

TGDaily's Boring electrical outlets revamped with Inlet.

Nop. the plain outlet that contains only copper and plastic and is flat with the wall is better

phantom loads : I dont see how ordinary outlet have more phantom load than an outlet with built in USB

safety : this adapter that holds onto the old outlet and sticks out of the wall is SO easier to smash (or pull out along wih pieces of the original outlet behind it, if anything this is less safe than the original outlet` alone

Hmm...Looks to me like a sales gimmick to sell more cheap junk to people. I agree with Ash - the flush outlets are safer, and the lock-out feature is available with them. As for phantom loads, the usb port is more likely to draw power when not in use since there must be a transformer of some kind inside it.

They make it sound like the electrical outlet being unchanged for 100 years is a bad thing - The outlet is unchanged because it is simple and it works.

  what is it?
does is an clone of this standard?


all european approved receptacle are made tamper safe, so it isn't an innovation.
also, phantom power can be eliminated with removal of recharger: if someone forget to remove it, it will forget also to press "UNplug" button.

I think they mean the shutter which is inside the socket, intended to preent the insertion of hairpins etc by kids. The half-isolated pins on plugs are part of hte plug design not the socket, so have nothing to do with the "new socket" presented above



In Israel (rougly based on early European standards, and developed on its own since) we have both the simple (insert hairpin get shock) and tamper proof ones, the simple ones being more common

The tamper resistant ones have their advantage and IMHO its not so much kids safety (kids have to be educated on not messing up with stuff, electrical sockets are just a tiny bit of the possible dangers - They could just as well poke the hairpin in the back of hte computer power supply etc and nothing would prevent it, or unscrew a ligtbulb from a desk lamp, etc etc and the only right thing to do is educate the kids that electrical devics are only to be used the correct way and not played with), but to protect the sockt itself in places contaminated by fine dust and with frequent plugging-unplugging (where a cover door won't last for long) - the shutter keep the 2 main contacts clean, so not prone to make a high resistance conection, and can prevent a few burned sockets and possibly fires

But the shutter have its own problems too, mostly : It catch on the wider section of pins of European plugs (like the one in the picture) and makes it hard time to pull the plug out. When the user tries to poull the plug out with force (and i seen a few such cases), this often end up either with the faceplate being ripped off the socket (exposing live contacts), or the socket pulled from the wall (yep some sparkies have no clue how to secure sockets in walls), and i seen a few cases where the user attempted to pull out a cheap USB charger, and you know how pathetic those are made, the charger break open, the cover in the user's hand, the circuit board hanging on 2 wires still attached to the plug base and plugged in. In a few other cases (with lower quality sockets) the shutter itself get stuck in the closed position rendering the socket useless

i also intended socket shutter in my previous comment 

New North American codes also require the tamper proof sockets but older ones are still available for replacement purposes. I also agree with Ash that informing kids of the hazards of electricity are better than simply relying on the tamper proof shutters.

If you really need a outlet with these gimmicky features such as a USB charger...they sell ones with the USB port but recessed into the wall making it much hard to damage.   

I also see nothing securing this device to the wall.  Sure it's outlets maybe tamper resistant, but pull the whole thing off the wall and that feature is defeated.  I also don't like the positioning of the plugs on the unit.  If the outlets were installed according to the standard (ground hole up), the plugs would be along the top, but if the outlets were installed the most common way (ground pin down) than the plugs would be along the bottom, which seems awkward.  Also won't no space for wall transformers and won't fit multi-gang outlets (though the single-gang is the most common).  Basically another plug-in tap.

Also, some devices don't like charging from high output (2.1a) USB plugs.

Also, some devices don't like charging from high output (2.1a) USB plugs.

If that is a problem for some devices, then these devices are violating the USB standard and it is problem of those devices.
The current rating is the maximum current allowed to be drawn from these, so if the device want less, it is it's duty to limit it, not USB power source.

Thats true but the problem i encountered more often, is devices that refuse to charge on plain 5v + shorted data pins, instead they wait for real approval (from some app that the user is supposed to install and that sends the approval over USB). Those are real bad since usually the app is unwanted anyway, and second not all users have windows to install that app even if they wanted....

Thats true but the problem i encountered more often, is devices that refuse to charge on plain 5v + shorted data pins, instead they wait for real approval (from some app that the user is supposed to install and that sends the approval over USB). Those are real bad since usually the app is unwanted anyway, and second not all users have windows to install that app even if they wanted....

But this is the only USB-compliant way of getting the full 500mA...
I know, most devices rely to the fact, than there is no real current limitation in most PC and modern notebooks. But many older notebooks and hubs really shut the output down, when the load does not wait for the approval and draw the 500mA earlier.
But the USB standard shouldn't require any special SW driver, the "current consumption" should be written in the USB descriptor of the USB device (phone,...), so the operating system should be able to assign the required power without any special driver, the mechanism is pretty fixed in the standard.

I think only some recent extension allow only some resistors in the "hub"/power source to identify the "hub" as a charger, so capable to deliver directly the higher current (even higher than the normal 500mA USB limit). These resistors are then sensed by the device and so it should respond accordingly (e.g. when connected to a PC, go through the approval loop, when to aocharger, draw the full current).
And these "USB chargers" should then contain the resistors on the data lines (some voltage divider from 5V to GND on each line, I do not know the details). Without these resistors the mobile phone would "think" it is connected to a PC and expect a command from there (at least read out of the descriptor field)...

Nope, if the 2 data pins are shorted to each other this means the device can pull max current, no need in software approval. Some devices however fail to follow this

@Ash: That could be. But it is part of the "USB chgarger" extension, the original USB standard didn't contained these possibilities. So the older devices either don't care at all and draw the full current directly (the worse situation), or refuse to charge.
Anyway when you connect the device to a computer, it should not charge unless it handle the power allocation according to the original USB standard, as in the computer are no resistors, nor shorts...

And this is where many devices fail. They dont ask the OS to allow max current, they awnt nothing other than their own software that came on the installation disk, apparently to give them some sort of proprietary approval. This looks to me like attempt to force the user to install the software rather than to follow USB spec....

On the mid way is my Motorola phone - It would accept charging on a PC runing Linux but ignore a PC runnig Windows (tested with multiplePCs of each group)

But that could be related to bugs - both in the hardware, as well as the software.
The mobile phones and such gadgets are developed with so much haste and lack of verification, the n only the most severe bugs are addressed. And from them only those in the software, as the software could be flashed with an updated version.
So bugs in the hardware are then patched by some external means. And one of them is the necessity of such "charger" software.
There I suspect a bug in the power circuit: The phone run all the time from the battery. But as in most of the time is in idle, it consume nearly no current, so does not interfere with the charging control (in the constant voltage state the current have to be observed in order to terminate the charging correctly).
Now when it is connected to the PC, the controller in the phone remain active (to operate the USB) and so draw power.
And the phone is wired so, this power goes through the charging circuit, so the charger think the battery current is still high, so would continue to stay at the 4.2V and so slowly damage the battery.
So to avoid the battery being damaged in this way, charging circuit is disabled (a software hot-fix, targeted to avoid battery degradation and possible fire) when the USB link is active. But that mean the phone can not charge form the USB at all.
To allow that, a "hot-fix over hot-fix" PC software was developed to trick the USB so, the 500mA stay allocated, but the phone goes to the Idle state, so stop drawing current. In that case the charging from the PC could be allowed.

Well, the correct solution (and the main hardware bug was addressed, but only for the new platforms) would be to use a "supply-OR" device, what redirect all the power directly to the USB line (so whatever the controller draw, it does not influence the battery measurement by the charger), but that would require hardware modification. And that is practically impossible - at a time, when it become known, the affected models were not anymore on the production lines. So the adoption was done only on the recent devices...