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Handset Vendors Plug Micro-USB Charge Ports

Posted by timothy on from the kicking-and-screaming-to-the-briar-patch dept.

ketan324 points to a Register story touting an agreement among several phone makers to settle on Micro USB for their phones' charging ports, writing "It's about time for these cellphone manufacturers to wise up and design a universal phone charger. Although many manufacturers have already 'standardized' to a mini-USB interface, there are many more out there who use proprietary adapters. I wonder how Apple will feel about this? Will they finally realize that their oh-so-special adapter is nothing more than a fudged USB interface?" No legislation required.

3 of 363 comments (clear)

  1. And why the hell do I need a driver for this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I have working USB on my computer. Why the hell do I need to install a Motorola XP driver to charge my RAZR?

    1. Re:And why the hell do I need a driver for this? by PitaBred · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Windows USB functionality is severely backwards... why is my damn phone a different device when I plug it into a different USB port? Does the port address somehow magically make it behave differently? Can you tell that it's annoying having to plug every new device into every single port on my computer and installing the driver so that I don't have to worry about that when I actually want to use the device?

      Glad I only use Windows for gaming and to update my Blackberry's software.

      --
      My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
  2. oh-so-special? by nine-times · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I wonder how Apple will feel about this? Will they finally realize that their oh-so-special adapter is nothing more than a fudged USB interface?"

    Oh, like Apple is just using the dock connector to be "special"? It's true that the dock connector is *mostly* USB, but it also can carry audio and video so that, with only a dock, you can output to a stereo or TV. Also, the audio put out through the dock is supposedly different from what comes out of the headphone jack (I believe they aren't amplifying the audio from the dock), meaning you can get better quality for outputting to a stereo.

    So I don't know why the submitter has to turn this into an Apple-bashing thing. Apple actually uses standards pretty often. And often, when they do stray from a standard, it's in order to provide specific functionality-- and even then they often release the specs for their version, allowing others to adopt it. For example, I believe they released the specs for their custom "mini display port" that they're using without requiring any kind of licensing fees or anything.