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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.
...though I don't know is USB has the ompf for that, a standard would be nice. Especially if it worked on planes too.
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.
.... 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.
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!
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?
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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.
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.
There are two different sizes, by the way. The larger one is for diesel.
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.
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're both right.a lbum18/P1000121.jpg
The spec calls for 500mA but most vendors connect the port to an *unfused* 5V line. This (IMHO) is a BadIdea (tm). sure you can draw 2A, you can try to draw 100A too but something's gonna give.
Case in point: http://xbx.networkboy.net/modules/gallery/albums/
It's a design flaw (in most cases) that you can draw that much current from a USB port.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
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
A lot of motherboards power the USB through the +5VSB rail thus are unable to provide a lot of USB power over 500mA. Motherboards that come with 10 USB ports or more are powered by the main 5V rail, its rather trivial to find out you can get at least 2000mA out of one of them.
If it is sheer insanity and it is self inflicted.
Speaking for the U.S. (I know a lot of other countries are represented on slashdot with different laws and fundamental principles) this is a market issue. We don't have to buy cell phones. We don't have to buy phones with proprietary adapters. We do because it isn't that big of a deal. Yes, it's wasteful. Americans always have been. Yes it's annoying. Americans don't (or didn't) expect legislation to prevent annoying corporate habits.
We have too many laws in this country as it is. We also have too many real problems as it is. I'm all for government mandates around information like a warning label that says this is a proprietary cable and only works with your Treo 650. Mandating convenience for the american public is NOT the american way. It never was.
You'd be pretty pissed if you could only use a GM-approved fill neck for your car.
No, I would laugh and buy someone else's car. I was very interested in the VW Turbo Diesel but knowing I couldn't get diesel fuel at every gas station made me look elsewhere. I didn't call for a government mandate requiring all cars to use the same fuel or for gas stations to sell all types of fuel.
Why is your phone any different?
Why should my cell phone be any different indeed.
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.
'At least South Korea is democratic.'
Have you lived in either country? I've lived in both, and believe me, these days I'll take China (where I'm living now) over the peninsula any day of the week.
Oh, and since when is governmental mandatory hardware configuration democratic..?
You pay through the nose for the non-standard charger when you have to replace it in a few years, generally between 30 and 50 dollars for a part with a materials cost of at most a dollar.
You pay for it in phones that get thrown out because the non-standard charger tax in a few years makes it more feasable to dump the phone than replace the hideously unstandard wall-wart. Hence, more landfill costs, more materials costs, and a depressed to non-existant secondary market.
You pay for it in electricity, in the trickle costs of the many, many different chargers plugged in but idle in any given household.
You pay for it in brainspace, trying to keep everything clear in your head. Those times you fail to take the proper charger with you on a trip and you have to buy another one when you get there.
And on the other end of the spectrum, all of this is because the hardware companies want to bury hidden costs in the device to make a higher profit. There is no benefit to the end consumer at all. The manufacturers are just trying to raise the barrier of entry of selling replacement parts to keep those prices artifically high.
Well, guess what? The consumer does have a voice in making things fair. It's called the government. That's why you elect them. It doesn't always work, but that's what it's for. And in this case, the free market has had years to fix the problem, and it has only gotten worse. The amount of cheering on this thread is evidence of the animosity towards this purely profit-taking process.
This is people, seeing a problem and taking an action to improve the end-consumer experience and reduce overall costs. And good for them. It's nice to see a government that isn't kow-towing to every exploitive commercial process within its borders.
The ______ Agenda
[snarky]So uhhh...have you ever seen the movie "Gone in 60,000 milliseconds"?[/snarky]
The most important thing to do in your life is to not interfere with somebody else's life. -FZ
The free market has failed us for twenty years on this one. The free market says: buy a proprietary cable, or don't buy at all.
The free market dictates that nothing works together, so that the businesses maximize profit. This is an automatic collusion. Smith said that no two businessmen ever met that didn't immediately collude to fix their market; he might have added that some markets require no actual collusion, that some exploitation is just obvious.
This is one of the reasons we have governments. It's also why we don't have dozens of different power companies and dozens of power connectors in our home.
Present businesses have failed us, so now some other nation's government will step in and impose some order, as we are ideologically incapable. Profits will diminish for the manufacturers, but spending power will increase for the consumer, the Broken Window fallacy refuted.
Great, where exactly am I supposed to plug in my USB-powered powered USB hub so that I can recharge my USB-powered phone?
You can get a USB power adapter that plugs directly into the wall and provides power to a USB port, or a portable unit that powers a USB port from 4 AA batteries (one version called the "JAVOBooster" has a built-in flashlight as a bonus). Both are likely to be cheaper than the outrageously marked-up proprietary power bricks (even before taking into account the fact that you need one total, not one for each device).
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
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?
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...
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
I would agree with this if I got a free car charger also. Every time I buy a phone, I have to spend the extra $30 - $50 for this accessory.
Getting extra batteries to charge during the occasions that I am home would be an option I guess, but those are even more non-standard and expensive.
My last option is just suck it up and stay locked in to a single vendor, until that vendor decides to again change all the charger ports, no matter how inferior the product becomes.
Creating a standard pin and having a built in cost of a few pennies per phone seems to be the best option on the table.
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.