One cell phone charger to juice them all
Posted 06.29.2009 at 11:08 am
3 Comments
USB Trident Micro-USB would be the charger of choice for all of the EU's cell phones
Ever lose your cellphone charger? When your doomed search for friends or family with a phone of similar brand/vintage eventually fails, it's off to the third-party charger vendor where confusion and high prices await.
We can all agree, then, that proprietary charger plugs are among the larger pains in the respective behinds of cellphone users everywhere. But not so anymore in Europe: the EU is leading the way to create a standard micro-USB charger for all cellphones sold.
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Gadgets, Dan Smith, cell phone chargers, cellphones, charger, european union, micro-USB, mobile phones, USBCurrently there are around 30 different charger types in the EU alone, and the European Commission wants to reduce that number to just one. Today most of the largest mobile carriers have signed on to support the change including Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Apple (bye bye dock connector?), LG, and many others. This conversion would cover about 90% of mobile devices in Europe and should be rolled out beginning next year.
This shift towards a micro-USB standard is already supported by some international organizations that oversee mobile communications, so its adoption beyond Europe is fairly likely. It's about time.
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A month or 2 ago, I read about a coprporate consortium that had addressed this same issue. This group included most of the notables, but Apple was absent. (Might have been reported in PopSci)
They actually had a timetable for the changeover. Wonder what happened.
Would be nice if they would extend this concept to most devices that use a wall wart. I know that that the varied power demands come into play, but it would be nice to end up with 3 or 4 standards --rather than the infinite number that are available now.
It was the time to this standard to enter in Europe. I don't understand why there are such discrepancies between Europe and USA. And everyone maintains their point of view like in the metric system. I read about an NASA error when one engineer took the results in another metric unit and it resulted a small disaster.
That's the same thing with electric current. A system in USA, one in Europe and one in Australia.
I believe that all the standards must be unique. Because we are living in a single world.
http://ionicbreezeairpurifiers.com
YAY! I happen to live in a place with all sorts of rechargers, so am well aware of the problem. Just a couple days ago a friend was visiting and needed to call someone -- but her phone was dead. It also is a different make than mine, so my recharger was useless for her.
Even more irksome is when a single manufacturer has multiple chargers -- depending on the make and model.
I'd like to see a universal charger for EVERYthing.
Then maybe we can standardaize electricity, tv broadcasts, etc. etc. etc.