this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2024
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Every device I have just has a couple of blue ones and a couple of black ones, perhaps some orange ones and some USB-C ports, and good luck figuring out what they all can do. No symbols anywhere.
It's cool, the colors are just for aesthetics. Internally they're all connected to the same USB controller chip anyway.
/s probably
Edit: it was a joke. I know blue means 3.
If they're following the standard, which they often do but sometimes don't, white indicates 2.0 and blue indicates 3.0+. I think there are more but I don't remember the other colours.
Blue is a convention to indicate USB 3. Of course, not everyone actually implements that, and USB-C ports don't, as far as I know, do that at all, just USB-A.
My current desktop does both -- the case has USB ports on the top that come off a USB header from the motherboard, which have a simple number "3.0" pointing at its USB-A ports in front, but uses black plastic for them. The motherboard's USB connectors in back use the "blue plastic" convention on its USB-A 3 ports, and black plastic on its USB-A 2 ports. The motherboard also labels the USB 3 ports by having a text label reading "USB 3.2", which isn't listed on OP's set of symbols, and puts symbols on them.
Black is USB 2, blue is USB 3, and Orange or Yellow are usually "always on" and/or 2.4 amp or some other kind of thing like that.
Not on all vendors tho - coloring was an optional part of the standard. Dell often uses grey for USB3
It's the variety and surprise here that adds novelty and excitement to life.
https://www.usbmemorydirect.com/blog/usb-port-colors/
I definitely have a number of devices that use newer-than-USB 3.0 and use blue.
I don't think any of my devices actually use teal, regardless of what they support. Oh...hmm. Wait, I think my last desktop motherboard did that.
goes to investigate
Yeah, it has teal and blue ports.
My current motherboard uses blue or red for everything USB-A, so clearly isn't using blue to indicate "USB 3.0", and labels every port, blue or red, in English as "USB 3.2". So it clearly isn't using the port color to indicate purely speed.
Another source of novelty and excitement.
So much excitement.
I believe yellow or orange ports always deliver charging power regardless of device's power state.