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Universal Phone Charger Approved By UN Body
andylim writes "Plans for a universal mobile phone charger have been approved by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a United Nations body. The charger has a micro-USB port at the connecting end, using technology similar to what is commonly used with digital cameras. It is not compulsory for manufacturers to adopt the new chargers, but the ITU says that some have already signed up to it. 'We are planning to launch the universal charger internationally during the first half of 2010,' Aldo Liguori, spokesperson for Sony Ericsson told the BBC."
This folks is one of the two UN organisations (both older than the UN) who could run the WWW better than ICANN. The other being the Postal Union (UPU or IPU I think they changed their name).
So, there you go, the UN is not just the political shit. The ITU is what means that you can phone from point A to point B, they are the logical choice for control over the WWW and domain name system.
Now all we need is a universal standard of (in the words of Douglas Adams) 'little dongly things' for everything else:
http://www.douglasadams.com/dna/980707-03-a.html
'The little dongly things I am concerned with (and they are by no means the only species of little dongly things with which the micro-electronics world is infested) are the external power adaptors which laptops and palmtops and external drives and cassette recorders and telephone answering machines and powered speakers and other incredibly necessary gizmos need to step down the mains AC supply from either 120 volts or 240 volts to 6 volts DC. Or 4.5 volts DC. Or 9 volts DC. Or 12 volts DC. At 500 milliamps. Or 300 milliamps. Or 1200 milliamps. They have positive tips and negative sleeves on their plugs, unless they are the type that has negative tips and positive sleeves. By the time you multiply all these different variables together you end up with a fairly major industry which exists, so far as I can tell, to fill my cupboards with little dongly things none of which I can ever positively identify without playing gizmo pelmanism. The usual method of finding a little dongly thing that actually matches a gizmo I want to use is to go and buy another one, at a price that can physically drive the air from your body...It's hard to imagine that some of the mightiest brains on the planet, fuelled by some of the finest pizza that money can buy, haven't at some point thought 'Wouldn't it be easier if we all just standardised on one type of DC power supply?'...I strongly suspect that if you stuck a hardware engineer in a locked room for a couple of days and taunted him with the smell of pepperoni, he'd probably be able to think of a way of making whatever gizmo (maybe even the new gizmo Pro, which I've heard such good things about) it is he's designing, work to a standard DC low-power supply.'
That's just what the current USB standard says a port must provide.
But it doesn't stop a wall charger from providing as much as the cable can bear, which has got to be quite a bit more.
Apple have already signed an agreement and stated they will be using a standard micro-usb socket on the iPhones in the future. I believe Apple will introduce this socket in 2010.
Source: http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE55S1XZ20090629
Well, Nokia uses the Micro USB connector. And Sony Ericsson seems to be on board as well.
Just by market share alone those two make up more than 45% of the world wide market for new phones.
Get any of LG, Samsung or Motorola to sign up for this, and you're looking at more than 50% of the market for new cell phones.
But even with 45% of the market for new phones, it's still a massive incentive for the rest of the market. You could end up with a situation where new phones don't come with a charger, and you pay maybe 10 bucks for a new one if you need it. After all, with 45% of new cell phones needing this kind og charger, that's a huge opportunity for selling them separately.
I, for one, would like to see something similar happen to laptops as well, even though my 95W power brick is over sized for a netbook, it'd be nice not to have to pay a minor fortune to find the right one.
Why this was tagged !important is beyond me. This only has plus points! It is a very important step in reducing carbon- and other needless emissions. Imagine how much this saves in copper and other materials! The price of phones and other appliances can go down a small bit because the consumer doesn't have to pay for a charger every time it buys a new one. Packages become smaller so shipping new phones costs less energy. Shops can store more phones in the same space, so the chance that the phone you want is out of stock will become smaller... I could go on and on. This is a giant leap for the environment and the consumer!
-- Cheers!
The Koreans carriers back in late 2005 and China a year later. It's about bloody time - the world needs less junk.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Because ITU members would otherwise be working on world peace?
Because the UN was never given the power to mandate an electronic design. They can offer an opinion (recommendation) but that's it.
Nor should the UN make that grab for power, because once you go down that road, eventually the UN will start mandating what kind of roof you can install on your house. It's bad enough I have Congress telling me how much corn/potatoes I can or cannot grow in my own backyard. They were never granted that power under the Constitution, but since the mid-1930s they've exercised the power. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Universal standard?
Somebody please tell the UN that their jurisdiction is limited to this planet only, and they can't go round telling G'ould, Klimgons, Kzinti, Minbari, Mersians and Moties what to do.
My HTC charger comes with several separate pin configurations in the box. I just attach the correct one to the charger and off I go. Welcome to the 21st century. I don't need a different charger and I don't need to buy a travel adaptor.
By using micro USB, they did paint themselves in a corner for the 5 volts. However, the current provided has to be a minimum of 500mA according to the USB specs.
Having a power adapter able to supply more than 500mA won't blow up anything since the device should also work within spec and work with a minimum of 500mA.
Chargers being able to supply 5 volts at 2A won't blow up anything and recharge devices four times faster, if required/supported by the device. If not, the device will only take 500mA and the charger just won't be working at its full capacity of 2A.
I wonder if the new phone charger standard mentions a "from 500mA up to X amps" specification or not.
- Wikipedia
Not all phones will recharge this way without extra work. A co-worker and I just had a look at his new Blackberry, which refused to charge from his laptop unless proprietary software was also installed, and it refused to work with a discharged battery until at least 10 minutes after he first reconnected power and it had recharged the battery somewhat. Every other phone or portable device I've worked with worked _immediately_ after providing external power.
Standards are helpful, and I'd love to see a drop in the number of stupid adapters on the shelves of hardware stores and Staples, but amazingly stupid behavior like that Blackberry's can still be layered on top of good standards.
The wall-wart contains the circuitry that converts 110vac/240vac to low voltage DC. Killing the wall wart means that same circuitry goes into the device, meaning that devices will now be larger by the size of the wall wart.
More sensible would be to simply make everything charge via USB, as USB is already a low-power DC source, and most low power (say 10W and under) devices can be made to work from it. Future versions of USB could even be made to allow higher current delivery, allowing higher draw devices to be connected.
Devices like modem routers though will always have a wall wart, unless you want them to be obscenely large and heavy. I'm happy for those devices to stay as-is however, as the vast majority of them are 12V 1A or below, so I just bought a dozen 12V 1A adapters from eBay once, and now I don't have to worry about losing them as they all work with each others' adapters.
Just remember, as long as the voltage is the same, the adapter can work. Most devices will have their input voltage stamped on them near the power jack, match it with an adapter and off you go. Just make sure that the adapter is capable of delivering as much or more current than necessary.
E.g., a modem router than says "Input 12v 500mA" will work just fine with my standard 12v 1A adapters.
I hate printers.
What twisted your mind into thinking, a non-elected group, that is not even remotely connected to the constitutions of the countries in it, and is none of the 3 pillars of a government, would have any jurisdiction in those countries?
That would be totalitarian dictatorship. Plain and simple.
Additionally, where would you go, if that totalitarian global, all-encompassing dictatorship, would happen to not like your views and actions?? There would be not other country to flee to. The concept of asylum would cease to exist.
And you just talked about it, like it were something normal...
I fear for this world...
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Manufacturers don't actually need to use a wall-wart as such. They could easily use a length of cable terminated by a normal plug, with the "wart" part of it at some point on the cable away from the socket.
That way, we wouldn't have that continual problem with running out of usable power outlets because of some fucking wall-wart taking up more than its fair share of space.
Devices like modem routers though will always have a wall wart, unless you want them to be obscenely large and heavy.
I don't see any real gain from the users point of view in having that bulk and weight in an extra box.
The real reason so much stuff uses wall warts is because it makes the regulatory compliance issues much easier/cheaper to deal with.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register