Fake/Bad devices, poor quality USB cables and the Quectel EP06

[mpmc]

Hello everyone!

This may be a bit long so bear with me..

Some may remember the saga I had with the Quectel EC25 and Waveshare Simcom 7600G 4G dongle(s) and to cut a long story short...

• Quectel EC25-EUX dongle (Aliexpress): was either a fake one OR just bad to begin with, it killed one of my PCs USB ports - it went back to China & I got a refund eventually.
• SIMCOM 7600G dongle (Pi hut). I got two, both with chan_quectel worked fine however the performance wasn't great, audio output is very quiet on both ends of a call (trying all kinds of things, at commands etc did not help), and it was very temperamental if moved, and by that I mean adjusting the position without disconnecting would often cause it to disconnect the serial, even when no cables were used (plugged directly into a machine) and the usb connector was held tight during positioning - I even used electrical tape and blu-tac!

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Now I'm using the EP06-E (Aliexpress) which I'm happy to report works fine with chan_quectel but this was only after replacing the provided USB-C -> A cable with (another 30cm) that is able to handle the current the device needs at max, which give/take is 2 amps. Calls can be heard & internet works great too, and positioning doesn't cause disconnects!

What I've learnt from this is that all these devices include USB cables that are merely token gestures to get you started with the basics, which most of the time they'll work just fine, until you start pushing the device with internet AND calls causing the current ramp up to the max needed. In my case none of these included cables could handle the current and things would reset loop or just crash.

So please if you get any of these devices do yourself a favour and use a cable that you know can provide the power.