One of the tech world’s most archaic aspects is that plugs don’t universally connect to ports — even the ones that have the word “universal” right there in the name.
Aside from power cords with two prongs of equal size, the most prominent plug that can be reversed and connected is...
Apple’s Lightning connector, a much less widespread connector type than standard USB. Now, with the next generation of USB, everyone’s favorite serial bus will be reversible and connect any way you jam it in.
The tech industry has committed some heinous crimes over the years — slow, iterative hardware upgrades, phones larger than six inches, the N-Gage, a phone that you put inside a tablet.
The biggest crime for which the industry has to answer, though, is making us all jam a USB plug into a port multiple times before we know which way it fits. You know the drill: fail to plug your smartphone’s USB connector into your desktop or laptop, reverse the connector, fail again, reverse back to the original orientation and it’ll fit this time for some reason. The USB 3.0 Promoter Group is developing a next-gen USB specification, called Type-C, that will finally be a reversible design.
The new spec will be similar in size to this Micro-B connector.
The new specification is built on the already existing specs of USB 3.1 and USB 2.0. Along with the much desired reversible capability, the new connector will be small, about the size of USB 2.0 Micro-B (the connector used by most non-Apple smartphones today).
The new Type-C cable will also allow for scalablepower charging, and the connector will be scalable for future enhancements. Type-C will also allow for devices –particularly phones and tablets — to become thinner and sleeker, no longer bound by the shackles of the existing USB port.
The downside to the new connector is that it won’t immediately play nicely with the existing specs; adapters will be required for certain products. Upgrading to any new connector requires a new plug or adapter, and they’re usually cheap enough at least. In the long run (which will likely be quite short), a thinner, reversible, better scalable cord and connector will be universally beneficial — not only for our sanity, but for the future of our devices as well.
You won’t have to wait too long for the new spec to hit the market, as Type-C will be up for industry review in the first quarter of 2014, and the final product will hit during the middle of the same year, making next summer one of the most exciting times for tech. If those dates can be met, then we won’t have to bring certain industry insiders to justice for their crimes against humanity.
One of the tech world’s most archaic aspects is that plugs don’t universally connect to ports — even the ones that have the word “universal” right there in the name. 
The new spec will be similar in size to this Micro-B connector.
Source:http://www.extremetech.com/computing/172038-next-gen-usb-plugs-will-be-reversible-rectifying-the-tech-industrys-most-heinous-crime
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