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EU Commissioner Wants Standard For Mobile Phone Connectors
Jantastic writes "European Commissioner Günter Verheugen wants manufacturers of mobile phones to come up with a standard connector for chargers and microphones. If companies fail to do so, proposed legislation should speed up this process. In theory, this could improve competition, while enabling longer life cycles for these devices."
Nokia already made the switch.
Most of the new phones have mini-usb already. Instead of having two connectors, one for power and one for data, they can now have just one on the phone. Also, mini-usb is quite convenient for the other end's requirement and cheap to implement.
It is very nice. Motorola standardized on the mini-USB connector back around the time they introduced the RAZR. Every Motorola product I've bought since about 2005 uses a mini-USB jack for power and charging. This includes a Bluetooth stereo adapter, a couple pairs of Bluetooth headphones, a Bluetooth handsfree ear-bud, and at least five different models of cell phones.
And I have never had to buy a separate cable to connect my Motorola phones to my PC when it's time to upload new content. That's not true of my Sony-Ericsson or Nokia phones.
And because they're all the same, I have several identical power bricks, which is ideal for having one at work, a couple in different rooms at home, my wife has one, and our car chargers are all interoperable.
It's one of those levels of convenience that seems stupid and shallow (and probably is), but it definitely drives me back to Motorola as a customer.
John
Same deal here. The connector isn't enough. There has to be standardised voltages and currents to make the scheme work.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The problem is that there is no way to charge phones in a standard way with USB.
USB dictates that a device is only permitted to draw 100 mA unless it has negotiated a connection with a host AND that host has given it permission to draw more.
As a result, any device that charges from USB must either:
a) Limit itself to 100 mA or less (not going to happen)
b) Limit itself to only charging when it enumerates with a PC (see the "special driver" scenario, although there are admittedly better ways to do this - behave as a "standard" device for which all modern OSes have drivers, but still this is a very restrictive approach as it doesn't allow for "dumb chargers".)
c) Have some sort of method to signify the presence of a "dumb charger" to the device. THIS IS NOT COVERED BY ANY CURRENT USB SPECIFICATION. As a result it is at best covered by "de facto" standards. For example, mini-USB connectors have an additional pin not found in normal USB connectors. (Why, I do not know, I'm guessing "future growth" for later USB revisions). It is defined as "not connected" in standard USB, but it's a "de facto" standard (adopted by Motorola, Blackberry, HTC, Holux, and quite a few others) to signify a "dumb charger" by grounding this pin. (Unfortunately, most devices will fail to operate as a data device when this pin is grounded.)
Sadly, Apple does it in a different manner with weird resistances and voltages.
Unfortunately there's no way to standardize this without somehow incorporating it into USB 3.0. I sort of recall that this might have actually been taken into account for USB 3.0, but if not, it's too late for the EU - USB 4.0 is a looooooooong way away.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Ah, you mean like the N95 8GB that lets me connect with a standard mini usb cable but will not charge over the same?
Actually, that is the problem. A USB charger doesn't just supply 5V on Vbus and that's it. A USB device that's properly spec'ed can't draw more than 500mA from a USB port, but given some USB devices, that could mean it takes days to charge via USB, or even, it doesn't charge at all. (There are devices out there that draw more than 500mA when busy, so it's actually possible to drain the battery while in use.)
To cope with this, there is a "USB Charging Specification" that specifies how to identify the charger, so devices can do a quick detection, and if it is a charger, start drawing 800mA, 1A, 2A or however much they want to to ensure a fast charge, or even slow charging while busy. This is done via a specially selected set of resistors hooked to Vbus and ground to the D+ and D- lines. The charger itself shorts D+ to D-, and whe connected, instead of the idle state that is expected (D+/D- low - pulled by weak pulldowns from the host), it detects a "1" state on both pins. The device then knows it's safe to draw whatever it wants.
Oh yeah, unconfigured USB devices can only draw 100mA for a limited time - long enough to charge its battery so it can identify itself, at which point it must disconnect, boot up, and identify itself, at which point, it can draw 100mA or 500mA from the port (depending on what the bus can supply).
Cheap devices can use just 5V on Vbus and charge. Proper USB drives that pass USB certification can't, and if they attempt to draw more than 500mA from a host port on a PC, it's a fail. Hence schemes like these so they can pass certification, but still be able to "fast charge" properly. It's surprisingly difficult to do USB power "properly."
USB 3.0 devices can have 150mA unconfigured or 900mA (I believe) configured.
Some of the newer nokias also allow charing over Mini USB. Think the N96 does.
Those are actually Micro-USB connectors.
For example Nokia E71.
You can read more about those types of usb connectors here.
Trolls are like broken clocks. They show the truth two times a day. The rest of the day they talk nonsense.
Wasn't that a clear cut case of laissez-faire capitalism to the rescue? Did some government body force IBM to open their platform?
Well, in a way... when IBM lost their copyright infringement lawsuit against Compaq for reverse-engineering and clean-room-reimplementing the IBM BIOS. That's not so much a government body saying "You must open your platform" as "you can't stop others from opening your platform for you as long as they abide by the law."
You better believe IBM didn't want anyone else to be able to make compatible hardware. But there was a huge financial incentive for anyone interested in making clones to make compatible hardware, and the law just happened to be on their side. I actually shudder to think what would have happened if the legal environment then had been like it is now.
So it kinda is still a bad example. IBM was forced against their will to open their platform, but this was actually a result of a weakness in the anti-laissez-faire monopoly granted by copyright law.
The problem in this case, is that just about nobody has an incentive to make compatible chargers. At least not phone makers. Why, when they can charge extra for proprietary cables? I really couldn't say if there's any patent or copyright related protection makers of these proprietary chargers could claim, but it isn't clear it would matter either way.
The enemies of Democracy are
In China, USB charging has been mandatory for new mobile phones since 2007. By and large, phones will also sync using standard USB cables. However, I have noticed that my smartphone will actually drain the battery when "charging" if I have WiFi turned on... I guess there's just too much power drain when powering a GSM, bluetooth, and WiFi radio simultaneously.
http://www.eetimes.com/rss/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199800238&cid=RSSfeed_eetimes_newsRSS
--s
-- stephenc