Smartphones and tablets have been at the pinnacle of portable personal computing, putting the power of a computer with a fully functional browser at your fingertips. Yet, you still don't know what you're missing out on unless you can pack speeds of up to 4.8 Gbs per second across a thin cable that connects between your portable device and your computer. At least that's what many manufacturers are saying, as they anticipate the integration of USB 3.0 in many smartphones and tablets when this year will come to a close.

The 4.8 Gb figure translates to 625 Megabytes per second, a speed that will outpace USB 2.0 by ten times as much. Even with the speed capacity, mobile devices might not be able to catch up. It seems logical to integrate the fastest and most modern technologies possible, but USB 3.0 won't be lucrative unless smartphones start implementing significantly faster hardware and stronger processing power. Still, you'll benefit from a switch to USB 3.0 since smartphones currently possess the potential to excel to at least twice the speed of USB 2.0.

“What takes 15 minutes will roughly take 1 minute and 10 seconds,” said Rahman Ismal at CES. Ismal is CTO at the USB Implementers Forum. The statement is to be taken with a grain of salt, as the fractional download speed will only be possible if the rest of the device's hardware supports it. However, it is realistic to think that your tablet would recharge faster when you connect it to your computer's USB 3.0 port.

Note that, in order for a USB 3.0 transaction to take place, the cable, source, and destination all need to support the new technology. Even if both the source and destination have USB 3.0 support, you'll get a USB 2.0 transfer speed with a USB 2.0 cable.

The USB Implementers Forum is met with a challenge now, as it struggles to make a viable USB 3.0 interface usable on mobile devices. To do this, they must modify the specifications to the current USB 3.0 standard slightly. Ismal says that they're “coming out with new specs, new areas where [they] will make [USB 3.0] very power efficient, power friendly.”

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