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S Korea & China Mandate Common Chargers, Data Cables
mrbill writes "Seems that South Korea and China have mandated
Common Cell Phone chargers and data cables. No proprietary chargers and data cables any more. Must use USB for charging etc.
"
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This should happen all over. I wonder how much electronic waste is from cables and wall warts?
*It's not what you can do for the Dark Side but what the Dark Side can do for you!*
'nuff said
I hate it the way the same vendor changes connectors for different phones. Nokia gets the credit for using the same connector for all it's phones.
My Dad got a new cell phone made by the same company that makes my cell phone that comes with a dual power interface. At home, he uses the pin connector to charge. At my place, he can use the flat connector that I use to charge my cell phone.
what if a device needs more power than usb port supplies?
I want to live in China, or South Korea.
I like that idea. mini USB connector for data and power, have it connect to either a PC, or a powerusb plug.
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
I have been waiting for this for a long time. This is one case where the sheer insanity of having 12 different chargers makes some sense for a legislated standard. It's unfortunate the industry couldn't play nice enough to not require it, but at the same time, it's NEEDED here.
You'd be pretty pissed if you could only use a GM-approved fill neck for your car. Why is your phone any different?
..don't panic
...though I don't know is USB has the ompf for that, a standard would be nice. Especially if it worked on planes too.
I recently got a Samsung E900 phone. One of the things that annoys me most about it is that it has just one port. For everything. I can't charge my phone while taking the photos etc off it. If they could address that, then it sounds like a good idea.
Standardization Rules. It does tend to screw those proprietary :)
morons, but, what the hell...screw them
However, always beware the law of unintended consequences. It seems likely to me that the costs for this will be passed on to us, one way or another. The mobile manufacturers aren't just going to redesign and retool for free.
I would personally rather see more features, better battery life or enhanced reception than plug standardization.
Anyway, the USB port standard is pretty marginal. I've found them not to be all that durable, especially if you have to plug/unplug items frequently - like one will likely do with a phone charger.
All that said, I actually do have enough USB-chargeable devices that I'd like to see airlines and auto-makers start offering USB charging ports.
But when will South Korea mandate a cell phone system that works
in the rest of the world? I may need only one charger, but I still
need one phone for SK and one phone for China (and just about everywhere
else)...
.... as there is a ton of money to be made in after market accessories (see the iPod for a great example). It would take a lot of balls for cell phone companies (for example) not to do this in places where these mandates don't exist and cut off the income stream of their accessory companies. So consumers in places where these mandates don't exist still have to "vote with their dollars" as it were to encourage manufacturers to make it happen.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
I wish we could do this in the US. It drives me crazy that I have to throw away 2 chargers (one at office and one at home), a car charger, and the PC data cable every time I have to replace my phone. Only slightly less irritating is that I have to take all that with me when I travel since I have yet to meet someone with the same model phone I have or even one where the chargers are compatible. Maybe if I could get a phone to last more than two years before going bad, I might not be so annoyed at having to replace everything each time, but I see no good reason for all the incompatibility.
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
But this is BAD NEWS because it's GOVERNMENT CONTROL which is EVIL because the FREE MARKET would produce the BEST RESULT for the CONSUMERS!
Not a bad idea now, but when USB chargers are supplanted and eventually replaced by something that makes USB look like old-fashioned serial ports (yay COM1) I wonder how long it will take for them to get with the times.
Now every one who will say open source, free software, and open standard, will be called commies!!
:)
What the hell, it is a good move
now this is very nice news. would be even better if car companies put usb plugs right in a car. maybe one for data to play mp3's thru your radio, and a few just to charge various devices. who uses a cigarette lighter socket for cigarettes any more??? do we really need that huge socket plus a usb adapter?
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
Standardizing cables is a great idea. Now I can plug my 8-track or phonograph into my computer without finding the right adapter or cable. Someone will certainly complain about too much gov't invasiveness, but anything to get rid of those piles of wires I have hanging around with no known device to power or connect. It's nirvana!
One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
I've been wanting this kind of policy for yonks!
;-) ...preferably with no need to install software
Now that it's come - at least to cel.phones -
I'd like to see it generalised to other products,
as well.
(OK, so maybe my Electric Vehicle will has an
atypical charger & connection to the car...
for all the different types of devices, too...
'In Korea only old people use cell phone and universal cables to charge them.'
-Me, the real Korean-
I looked into getting a Data cable from my cell phone provider for a two-year old phone. They want $50! (I know eBay, etc). It goes to show that the proprietary cables cost a hell of a lot more money for nothing.
And I'll bet with these standard cables, Monster Cable will develop a super-editition with gold-plated connectors, etc, etc! Only $100! LOL.
I probably have 6-7 old laptop chargers. They're all using slightly different voltages etc., but they're close enough that it's trivial to get universal chargers that can handle the full span. The problem is that the plugs are all different. If you look at the "universal" laptopchargers you can buy, most of them come with a large selection of plugs... How hard could it be to ensure the laptop can handle an input voltage up to a reasonable maximum, and use standard plugs?
The summary says that phones "must use USB for charging". The fine article, however, says that "handsets sold there should be able to charge via USB".
There is a lot of difference between those two statements; the former makes absolutely no sense, as not every mobile phone user has a computer (or one with a USB port). The latter is a wonderful idea that frankly should be implemented as soon as humanly possible.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
At least most of the new phones of Motorola the A-series, the RAZR, SLVR and PEBL etc all come with USB ports for charging as well as data-transfer.
I'm much more funny, interesting and insightful than the moderators think
Now in europe please, oh and make sure they're all able to charge off of a sensible range of voltage and current and more importantly use the SAME USB socket, because let's face it there are twelve of those two.
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
I've spent the last 2 weeks trying to find accessories for my new Samsung, and it's impossible. It has a single proprietary connector for charging and headset. Worse, it's not the connector they've been using all along. It's new for Blackjack and Sync and all of the phones from the past 6 months. WTF!
No store carries anything, but if you're willing to wait, plenty is coming over from Hong Kong.
USB would be very nice!
-Patrick
"They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
This might not be good for cell phone accessory makers, though. Chargers are big business. I have three just for my phone. One for the office, one for the home, and one for the car.
Motorola has already using USB. It started with the RAZR and SLVR and KRZR. But their older cell phones still have proprietary cables.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
It's great that they are standardizing on the connection to the device. It would be even better if now there could be a standard for wall AC power. Needing to bring 6-8 adapters when I travel overseas is a bit crazy.
Launch every sig.
WTF does that mean? I have an iPod aftermarket charger that plugs into the wall and accepts the iPod's standard USB cable. Is that what they mean? Because at the least that would mean I could use a cheap wallplug unit for all my phone regardless of what stupid unique connector they use on the phone end. Of course that means that USB cables will triple in price.
Otherwise if they mean that all phones have to be charged by a USB port to a computer alone that would make less than zero sense. Considering, as others here have pointed out, not all USB ports draw enough current, it doubly makes less than zero sense.
It's quite deliberate. You have to buy the cable from them so they can charge you several thousand percent margin on it.
Deleted
One of the reasons I bought the phone I have (RAZR V3c) is that it was the only reasonably priced phone on my carrier that had a mini USB interface. I picked up a cable for $5 instead of $40 so I could hook it up to my computer and charge using that. I use the same cable for many other devices and don't have to carry a charger around with me.
Guess I have to take the good with the bad. Good news is no more searching for the "right" sync/charging cable for phones, makes IT support easier. Bad news is the market is now flooded with useless crapola (ala iPod) that my phone plugs into now. Hey, who can't say no to desktop speakers in the shape of dog poo? C'mon!
Nokia gets the credit for using the same connector for all it's phones.
I got bitten by exactly that. I had a Nokia phone that ran out of power, but the charger was at home. So I borrowed a Nokia charger from someone else. I looked for a voltage rating on the phone, but couldn't find any, so in the end thought "ok, both phone and charger is Nokia, and the plugs fit, so let's give it a try".
Took half a year before the battery could hold power for more than a day. Charging a 15 volt Nokia phone (when I got home, I checked the voltage of my own charger) with a 3 volt Nokia charger is very bad for the battery.
Of course, the other way around might be even worse.
You are so wrong.
You do not need a laptop to 'USB-charge'
You can pick up a USB Mains Charger for as little as 5 USD.
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
What are the chances that things made in China and South Korea would make it to the U.S. (where I am, I'm being insensitive)?
What's that?
Oh....
For those of you who have samsung's razr wannabe; my roomate has one. I have an el-cheapo Samsung SCH-a630. He lost his charger for a bit, and I let him borrow mine. it worked.
After he found his, i lost mine, and tried to borrow his: didn't work. there were extra grooves that prevented plugging in.
Sony CEO throws temper tantrum, claiming their proprietary interfaces and formats actually benefit consumers...
Pretty much every GSM, UMTS and CDMA motorola (so not wierd stuff like that IDEN thing) currently available has a mini USB port which is used to charge the phone. :)
You can use a wall-wart charger or a car cigarette lighter charger or whatver. It also uses USB for data transfer and if the USB port is powered, will charge whilst sending data. There is the negative that you cant charge and do data at the same time if the USB port cant provide enough juice but the answer is to charge and then transfer data, transfer data and then charge or build/buy a cable that the USB charger plugs into as does the phone and the computer such that the phone draws power over the power pins from the USB charger whilst communicating over the data pins with the computer. (I am surprised that such a cable doesnt already exist
Well, I'm not wrong about the article summary being wrong, and I'm not wrong about not everyone having a computer with a USB port (and I never even mentioned laptops), so at best I'm wrong about the need for such a computer in order to charge via USB, which was implied. So, I'm 66% right; not entirely sure that constitutes being "so wrong".
It's official. Most of you are morons.
You can 'officially' only guarantee that a USB port will give you 100mA at 5V - 0.5 Watts. A device can ask to increase power consumption (to up to 500mA) in its descriptor following initial power up, but it should not do that until it's been allowed to. In practice, lots of devices just say, "aah, I'm ok to do this" and try to pull the full 500mA.
.5W - over 130 hours, excluding losses due to stepping up the voltage from 5V to something useful to charge laptop batteries. Even at 2.5W, that's still over a day of constant charging.
;-)
Other devices use more than 500mA, and they work in some instances and not in others.
But either way it's gonna take a long time to charge your 4460mAh/14.8V battery (237KJ of energy) on
And that's excluding the fact that stepping from 5V to something useful to charge laptop batteries will not be a lossless operation
I hope they mandate also clean USB chargers.
USB does not allow to simply use the power. Power is part of the bus protocol so the USB device has to fulfil several requirements.
The problem with technology is that quite often we either end up with one standard that becomes outdated after years of use, or way too many standards that are highly incompatible. There are times a happy medium is achieved, but not always. Many times a standards body is created to create oversight over an industry standard and help regulate change so that yesterday's connector is compatible with today's PC/laptop/camera/phone/etc.
My concern about any government doing this is that these are 2 governments out of 190+ in the world imposing a standard. What if the US, canada, UK, France, Germany , Russia, or anyone else impose another standard different from USB? And what happens when USB is 20 years old and needs to be replaced. All you people decrying the current state of things will turn right around and decry that the government isn't doing it's job. Well sometimes that's the point of the free market, to do something the government doesn't do well and should not be doing at all. A standard imposed by the entire industry, rather than a few countries, would be a lot better, and the standards body would regulate change throughout the industry.
As for USB, there are at least 3 USB connector ends I know of. The most familiar to everyone is, in my opinion, too large for most phones. USB made connectors and cables better but they didn't make it "one size fits all." Does the law distinguish between the three connectors? If not, we will still have some problems with not having one connector to rule them all.
It would be nice if the US government put pressure on the industry to come up with some universal connector scheme that provides power and data transmission. Cell phone companies want something as small as possible. If they base it on the USB standard, great. I just want one connector for my bluetooth, my handset, and be able to bum a charge from the guy next to me or buy any old connector for $5 if I forgot mine at home.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Great, where exactly am I supposed to plug in my USB-powered powered USB hub so that I can recharge my USB-powered phone? I can't connect it to my USB-powered laptop because I can't find a PC with a free USB port to recharge and my battery is dead.
All these laws did was kick an aftermarket of USB-connectored wall-warts into overdrive. I've got two of these devices already for iPod recharging when travelling. Griffin makes a nice one with a flexible dock cable. I just leave the cable plugged into the wall wart and wrap the cord around it when I am not using the charger. I keep the other charger as a backup as the Griffin has enough available current to charge two video iPods if I use a cheapo brain-dead USB 1.1 mini-hub as a Y-splitter.
This is extremely short-sighted legislation and moves the proprietary device issues to the connector on the phone. Right now, we've already got a dogs breakfast of devices with cables that are USB on one end and device unique on the other. I've got three different usb cables on my desk right now and none of them have the same connector. One of them is a standard USB mini jack but the other two are Frankenconnectors from the depths of product design hell.
Using these types of cables to plug my cell phone into a USB port would be handy but I just happen to have a Dell laptop at work. Since my laptop bag is already full of proprietary USB cables it's going to be a lot of fun trying to dig through the spaghetti. I'll have to upgrade the powered hub I use, too. Although the newer 610's are better about USB than some of the older models I still have to connect to "shore power" to plug in some of the hungrier devices I own. The Dell just doesn't put out enough juice to supply USB juice to multiple devices appropriately. Neither does the keyboard USB port on my iMac, come to think of it.
Good thing I have a stack of chained powered hubs at home.
Ah, everybody should be equal the world should be fair.
I get a charger for free with my phone. I don't get gas for free with my car. If people really really cared that they had the same charger for everything they would have insisted on it years ago. They don't care so it's a non issue. Given that it's a non issue why should I pay the extra cost for the design of phones which have to use USB?
You want it? You put it on the list of criteria of features for your next phone and you pay for it.
Deleted
I don't quite know what to say. That is excellent.
Oligopolies are the result OF a free market if those markets are not regulated and made fair.
Like Highlander, there can only be One (or 3-4 in this case)
The reason that his has not happened naturally is because the real consumer demand for common chargers and data cables does not exist to a large degree. If it did then the free market would have already responded. Don't put too much stock in the shrill anecdotes here in Slashdot praising the heavy hands of authoritarian governments who consistently think the elites running those governments know better than consumers and manufacturers.
We have freedom of commerce in the US, so to mandate this would be to tell people how to run their businesses.
We do have many regulations, so I understand that even in the US we have standards to comply with, but to do something like that might run some companies out of business. There is a pretty large secondary market in the phone charger & accessory markets.
"I have an odd craving to whisper about those few frightful hours in that ill-rumored and evilly shadowed seaport of dea
If we could use a system like this to consolidate our gadget power requirements, we could save a lot of money in electricity every year by reducing the number of wasteful DC transformers. (And yes, I know about universal power bricks with an assortment of plugs. Not what I'm talking about.)
The closest approach to this would be one of these AC to USB connector gadgets. Of course this is no good for devices without the capability to charge over USB.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
OK, so I looked at the article which was about a paragraph and linked me to another article which was about four lines long and linked me to another article, again about a paragraph long, linking to a "full story which gives a 404 error.
Of course, this being slashdot, I know better than to be suprised by this.
The chinese article is only three links deep and is actually online. It says "Under the new standard, all mobile phones, regardless of the brand, will be able to share one charger with a USB access, allowing users to charge handsets through laptops." - so it's still pretty ambiguous.
Also, though the Chinese effort seems to be government-mandated, the South Korean program is being requested by carriers, with no government involvement.
Woo-hoo! Laws made for consumers! It makes me want to tear up.
I'd like to see what kind of phone you use that needs a 4460mAh/14.8V battery. What does it do, bounce signals off the stratosphere to call over the horizon?
While i do like the idea of being able to use the same charger for any mobile phone ( I've actually purchased a proprietary adapter for my brothers phone to keep at my place, since he never remembers to bring his when he comes over, and we have different phones ) I have to wonder if such government mandates on design will prevent such innovation as Apple's MagSafe power adapters.
But you just said it makes 33% sense, which is absolutely NOT "absolutely no" which you referred to.
so you ARE absolutely wrong.
I think he was replying to his parent post, which was something along the line of "what about laptops?"
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Do not S.Korea and China use the same type of cell phones as North Americans? I mean, I'm sure that Nokia or motorolla aren't going to create two types of the same cell phone just so that they have 1 proprietery charger, and 1 without for China. So hopefully North America should see more and more cell phones with the same adapters now I would think.
This is the second example, but certainly not the last, where China has set a defacto standard for us. Here's what they did with DVD formats.
When a country owns all your manufacturing capacity, you can't really tell them no. Who else is going to make stuff for you? Plus we owe them billions on the trade deficit.
And this is only the warm up act. DVD formats and cables, little stuff. Wait until we start rolling over on the big stuff! ROFL! Maybe we'll wake up to obvious one of these days.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
We have 4 laptops and, I think, 7 types of laptop chargers in our household. Wouldn't it be nice if the laptop chargers were all the same?
The gp poster was dreaming about charging his laptop with usb, and the parent was pointing out that it was absurd.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I finally hit the nerdvana of my phone, my mp3 player, my wife's phone, my GPS, and Camera all charging/data transferring off of a Mini-USB connector. That means ONE car adapter plugged in and only ONE 3 foot usb cable to toss in with the laptop and leave the wall warts at home.
If I didn't have to factor the charging form-factor into purchase decisions, it would be much easier. It isn't a deal breaker, but it was the deciding factor on my current phone.
"A REAL computer has ONE speed and the only powersaving it permits is when you pull the power leads out of the back!"
Its funny. My Motorola razr phone looks like it charges from a mini-USB port, but if you plug it into a generic usb power supply (like the one for my ipod) the phone reads "Unauthorized Charger". Bastards.
0xfeedface
According to the USB spec this is true. However, I have yet to see a USB host that does the power per the spec. That is, a programmable current limiter and overcurrent detector for every port. These are costly, and most USB host devices are cost sensitive (PC mobos, consoles, set top boxes). Most often the best you can hope for is a self-resetting fuse for every socket module (2 ports), such that your current limit is 1A per 2 ports. If you don't plug anything into the second port then that's a full 5W available for charging your cell, warming your coffee, or powering your your toys.
Hey why stop with handys, just do the same with printer ink tanks. I am sick of paying more for printer ink than for channel No. 5 for my girlfriend :-)...
I mean if every printer producer had to build at least one model with standard ink containers consumers would win big time.
I'm travelling a lot (for business and leisure) and currently carry a charger for the notebook, the camera, the pda, the phone, the mp3 and the racer. All of these also need (different) converters for different power outlets (although most chargers can cope easily with different voltages and ferquencies) in different countries. A standard (WORLDWIDE including airlines) for AC power could remove all of them from my bag (because this standard power including cables would be available everywhere). Also I usually strongly oppose any government interference in technical designs, but I really love this one, because it really opens up the market and saves the environment.
It makes sense depending on your point of view. My girlfriend's camera charges by the USB port with a standard male USB->mini-usb cable. For when you aren't around a PC it also has an AC adaptor with a female RCA plug, so you can still plug your standard USB cable into the phone and then the wall-wart.
That's only partially true. While the phones use a standardized USB port for connection, some of them (at least the Verizon RAZR V3C and V3M) will give a message "Unauthorized charger" if you hook up a generic mini USB charger. There may be some kind of handshake required that only the $30 Motorolla chargers are guaranteed to perform. The article summary only mentions standardization of ports. I wonder if software control mechanisms will be eliminated as well...
Maybe, maybe not. According to this http://www.businessweek.com/technology/tech_stats/ cell060223.htm Motorola and Nokia still own the biggest chunk of the market and could still sway adoption of standards. Still, who doesn't want to sell in China?
I just wish that the plugs for different voltages were different; I would really like it if someone could not plug a 12 volt power supply into a 5 volt router.
Well, I'm not wrong about the article summary being wrong,
I submit that you are wrong about the summary being wrong. Though you pointed out an inconsistency from the article, I believe that the relations make the statements both correct, and you wrongerer. The phone *must* accept USB as a possible charging method. The user *may* use USB to charge the phone. Those are adjustments to the statements in question to remove any ambiguity. You may object to the specific meaning I've given them, but I submit that both are reasonable interpretations of the statements made and they are both consistent. One was looking at it from a user standpoint of what that can/should/must do, and the other from what the phone makers can/should/must do.
And as for your assertion that not all computers have USB ports, I would challenge you to find any consumer-aimed computers from Apple, Dell, HP, Gateway or sold in any Best Buy, CompUSA, or Circuit City that doesn't have a USB port. If you are correct, you should be able to find a single computer that doesn't have USB on it. Otherwise, I would put you in the 100% completely wrong with no possible correct percentage at all. Sorry, I don't consider my 15 year old XT sitting in the garage running DOS 3.3 (the best damn DOS) as a reasonable example of a modern computer without USB.
Learn to love Alaska
This may be kind of off topic, but I followed the link to an article summary on Techdirt, which incidentally links to 2 other article summaries on Techdirt and one on another news site The one about South Korea and Japanese mobile providers deciding to standardize had a "Full Story" link leading to a 404.
I know we're not all inclined to RTFA, but shouldn't there at least be a FA?
All SprintPCS phones all use the same connector. I bought a Sprint Treo phone that didn't have the right connector built-in, but a cable was included in the box to adapt it to the Sprint style power connector.
I for one welcome our new USB overlords
Q: How many free market economists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Free market economists don't change light bulbs. They sit in the dark waiting for Adam Smith's invisible hand to do it.
As for authoritarian governments.
Seems you can have democratically elected authoritarian governments. At least the western media does like to call a number of democratically elected governments authoritarian.
Such governments aren't that bad if they are actually interested in improving things in the country. Could be better than regularly switching between one of two parties, where both aren't interested in improving the state of their country.
Being regularly given a chance to pick one out of a hand of preselected cards by The Magician isn't that wonderful. I suppose it's good to let the audience participate in the show. Makes them happy and is good entertainment.
thats the best thing to come out of korea since our troops
I for one welcome our non-proprietary cell phone charging overlords.
(Sorry)
I hope they are prepared to inflict appalling torture on offenders. I for one am quite happy to overlook human rights record on this matter.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
I'm annoyed that car chargers aren't standard with phones, too. But I bought a $20 75W mini-inverter plug (12 vdc -> 110 vac) that lets me connect my cellphone charger (or laptop, or self-inflating airbed, or ...) to my car's accessory outlet. It's great having AC on the road.
I've been in nice (4-star) hotels in 3 cities in China in the last couple months, and all of them have had relatively "universal" power outlets. 250ish volts, mind you, but most electronics can handle that nowadays. The simplest ones had 2 outlets, one of which could handle US 2- and 3-prong and international 2-round-prong plugs, and the other of which could handle 2- and 3-prong slanted plugs (Asia? Australia?) The more sophisticated ones, in for example the Beijing Continental Grand Hotel, looked like the female end of one of those "universal" plug adapters... all the different holes just blended together. I haven't needed a single plug adapter in all those cities, and I hope China exports these things to everywhere else in the world.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
I was irritated at having to find room for ANOTHER wall-wart outputting 5V@300mA to a propriatary plug..
I figgure we need about 3 connectors....
#1 - Mini USB for small power devices, phones, ipods, PDAs etc. Dishonorable mention here goes to Palm for the Zire72 that has mini USB AND a barrel connector on the bottom. The power supply it comes with outputs, you guessed it, 5V@500mA. Yet the Zire72 will only trickle-charge from USB. Interesting since a $5 cable from Ebay that breaks out the power lines into that barrel connector can charge it at full rate.
#2 - A higher wattage plug for high-drain devices like laptops and high power battery chargers. Something like the larger port from one of those old universal power adapters from the 80s would get the job done. 24V@5A should be enough. The Dell I'm on now (Core Duo, 2GB, 100GB@7200 RPM) is 19.5V@4.62A, so that leaves some headroom. Perhaps bumping to 10A would be usefull.
#3 - An in-between port. Something smaller than the big plug from #2 so that they can't be confused or connected to the wrong things. 12V@5A should be plenty.
Those would cover every small device I've ever seen use a power supply. Most everything that needs more power than that goes to 120V/220V directly, perhaps with an internal power supply, and isn't portable. And yes, I included iPods in that list. While I don't mind the dock connector overmuch, it would be nice to have a mini-USB on there as well to charge and sync with so that I don't need a special cord just for the iPod. It would also cost Apple next to nothing to include on future iPods.
I've only covered the device plugs here, the connector on the other end could be a standardized 4-pin. One for each + line and a ground. One could then use whichever voltage you wanted, or all of them.
I don't know if it's the best idea for this stuff, but it summs up my mussings from this morning. It would result in a standard connector and voltage for every device and a single power supply to drive them. Something I would love to see. It also doesn't cover data, but I would add that I would require devices charging from mini-USB can NOT require any handshaking to block the charger like some Motorola phones do.
Data is a little tricker, but it should be possible to create a standard interface profile for all phones, for instance.
I wanted EU to mandate the same. It's such a pain to forget your charger anywhere...
I wanted EU to mandate the same. It's such a pain to forget your charger on a trip...
Standard responses:
1) YAAAAAAAAaay! Consumers have always wanted this. Go China!!
2) BOOOOOOOOooo! How come the evil nations had to do this first?
3) BOOOOOOOOooo! Regulation = bad.
This demonstrates a fundamental problem with today's markets. Every company tries their hardest to keep things proprietary and cut-off other companies. HD-DVD -vs- Blu-ray, proprietary connectors, closed-source drivers, DRM, Copy-protection, EULAs, etc. Companies still haven't realized that standardization leads to better acceptance and more profits than lock-in. (Ex: IBM lost the PC market because they lost their vendor lock-in, but it resulted in an exlposion of PC sales.)
And it isn't just the companies to blame. Imagine if a company created an ISO standard power adapter, but it cost 10 cents more - consumers would probably buy another company's phone to save 10 cents, then complain about paying $50 more to replace the power adapter.
We are in a game where each player is trying to win for themselves, which means everyone loses. This whole thing just reminds me how sick I am of the human race.
Ever run 2 amps through 26 guage wire (typical USB wire crap) -- and DC current no less? Not only are we talking significant line loss because of the small wire guage (and distances, of course. That guage is barely capable of 500mA. 22 guage will get you close to an amp. 2A, while not yet running the risk of a fire, is a BAD idea...
The subtleties of the English language... "Phones must be chargable through USB" does not preclude another charging method. Since the summary did not say that phones "must use only USB for charging," the summary is essentially correct. A quick glance at the reference article at "The People's Daily Online" verifies that this is the intent of the new "rule". (And it is described as a rule in the article at Techdirt, but is described as a standard in The Peoples Daily Online.)
My Nokia 3155i uses the smaller charging socket, but it came with an adapter so I can use older chargers.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
This is a good thing! Amazing what countries will do to boost immigration. The good news is, I won't need such a large cargo container to ship all my household goods now that my cellphone chargers don't need to come along. The bad news is... I don't OWN a GSM phone.
Ross Youngblood
Give me one data/charging cable with a USB connection to my laptop or wall wart and let me charge my devices from the laptop or the wall wart. (thinking a powered usb hub).
Now how to deal with the different voltages.
US = 115 volts 60Htz
EU = 240 volts 50Htz
-- I am the NRA, enough said...
Try Firewire, then. You can push 45W over Firewire just fine, which is enough for many laptops.
Ever since I got my iPod (in 2001), I've wanted to be able to use a single AC adapter with a Firewire cable for everything. Sadly, nobody's done this.
Notice Techdirt has the dept as:
from the five-year-plan dept
Now where have the seen dept's like that before?
Universal, my ass...
I tried that both with a Motorola Razr and a L6.
If I plug it in a linux (debian) PC, its charging.
If I plug in the windows PC, its not charging.
If I install some appropriate driver on the windows PC, its charging.
If the battery is so low that you cant even turn it on anymore, then it wont charge, no matter if its the windows or linux PC.
More:
I have a Ipod charger, the plug on the block is just an USB plug. I can charge my ipod either by plugging it in my USB port on a PC, or in the charger block. Tired the same thing with my phones: didnt work.
I bought a no-name car charger, with a mini usb plug, supposed to work for blackberrys. Didnt charge my motorola phone.
Bought the motorola/Cingular brand car charger: Worked fine, even though the battery was completely dead.
So the USB charging interface is far more complicated than just a 5V power supply. I bet its not going to be that simple...
The link in the article points to Techdirt : http://techdirt.com/articles/20061219/092747.shtml ... which links to another of it's own articles : http://news.techdirt.com/news/wireless/article/622 8 ... which finally links to the actual article on PhoneScoop : http://www.phonescoop.com/news/item.php?n=1502
Is someone from Techdirt trying to increase their hitcounter?
Buy a phone, it comes with a charger, you charge it. Who cares if your neighbor has a different charger??
When my wife and I travel, we have to carry the following chargers:
1 for my phone
1 for her phone
1 for the laptop
1 for the PDA
1 for the camera
Sure, it means we can recharge everything at once if we have to. But it also means we have to carry 5 items that do the same thing. That's wasted clutter.
Now, if each device used the same connectors and voltage, we could cut that down to one charger. That would be very convenient.
I'm not saying government mandate is the way to go. I'm just pointing out that there's a valid reason people might want those common chargers.
On another note, I think you're getting North Korea and South Korea mixed up.
Just for anyone who is interested, I have the Motorola E770 (UMTS) It has a couple of nice USB features:
1/ It takes a standard (cheap) mini USB lead (as used by some cameras) and connects to a PC as if it was a memory stick. This allows easy upload and download of pictures and MP3 files. I use it as an "iPod" on bus trips. I only have the standard 64M microSD card but you can put in a bigger one, I know 1G is available and there might be even bigger ones by now. You can also use it for all the same things you would normally use a memory stick for, including I suppose booting linux, if you have a big enough uSD card.
2/ While plugged in it charges from the PC
3/ You can use your own MP3 as the ringtone...why pay money when you can record your own!!
4/ My sons are a bit into coding and have figured out how to load java to the phone and run it.
Bit of a caution though...some operators may disable some of those features. Then you need to find someon who knows how to unlock it...
"Well, guess what? The consumer does have a voice in making things fair. It's called the government. That's why you elect them."
Please remind me who won China's last democratic election.
Deleted
I work at Nokia. The charger formats have been something I constantly complain about whenever I do user-level phone testing. I would really like to see a standard format, too. For the most part, I like the fact that our phones usually have one of three fairly standard connections (DC large, DC mini, USB). And before you get too touchy -- not all Nokia-branded phones are made by us, and the OEM phones don't use our standard connectors.
However, not too long ago we designed a low-end phone. It's shipping to many carriers around the world (under different names and plastics), and it was originally designed with the DC mini charger. The version of this phone that is being sold to Verizon was MANDATED to have the DC mini socket removed. Why? Well, I never got a sufficient answer when I asked that question, and believe me, I complained. I was told by someone (although I can't prove this) that Verizon is worried people would stick paper clips or something like them in the charger socket and short the phone, but I call b.s. on that. So instead of having a "standard" socket (by our standards at least), the phone uses the pop-port (Nokia proprietary) connector to charge.
So even if we have recommendations from industry or government, the carriers might end up sticking it to you anyways... I guarantee you they make a HUGE profit on accessories.. because I know how much everything is at cost.
Same phone, but different features:
http://www.nokiausa.com/phones/2366i/
http://mobileburn.com/review.jsp?Id=2235
What I want: Portable devices that use ultra-capacitors, with a standardized instant-charger. For example, a phone with a 1-day battery that takes 10 seconds to charge.
No, I will not work for your startup