How to tell the difference between a USB charging cable and a data cable?

Data cables and USB charging cables are both types of connection cords. At first sight, not everyone can immediately tell the difference between a USB charging cord and a data wire. What distinguishes a data cable from a USB charging cord? How do you tell if a wire is for data or charging? In this essay, we'll outline the distinctions between the two and demonstrate how to spot one from the other.

Functions

In essence, the ability of the charging cable to charge the battery and the data cable to transmit files helps to distinguish between the two types of cables. Typically, a data connection may also be used to charge a gadget. However, data transfer is sometimes not possible with pure charging cords.

On the other hand, charging with a charging cable is usually faster, especially if it is a fast-charging cable.Many devices that can be charged via USB connection do not contain any transferable data. The summary is as follows：

USB charging cable: It can only be used to charge the mobile phone and it without data transmission function.

USB data cable: It can charge, but also connect the mobile phone to the computer to transfer data.

Appearance

Generally speaking, USB charging cable is thinner than the data cable.What distinguishes a charging cable from a data wire based on appearance?Check the number of contacts in the USB port by turning the side with the contact piece upward. The data cable contains four connections, whereas the charging cable has just two.Additionally, there is a simple approach you can use to rapidly identify the wire. Connect your smartphone using the cord to your PC to complete this. If your computer claims to be linked to a media device, the connection is actually a data cord. On the other hand, if your phone's charge indicator simply indicates that a power supply is occurring, you are often using a pure charging cable.

Internal structure

Data cables typically contain four wires (positive, negative, data transfer & data receive). The positive (+) and negative (-) wires carry electric power to the device while the other two data transfer (D+) and data receive (D-) wires are responsible for data exchange. USB charging cables only have the positive and negative power wires but lack the data exchange wires.

Red line: positive pole of power supply (wiring identification: +5V or VCC)

White line: Negative voltage data cable (identified as: Data- or USB Port -)

Green line: Positive voltage data cable (identified as: Data+ or USB Port +)

Black wire: Ground (marked as: ground or gnd)