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Micro-USB Cellphone Charger Becomes EU Standard
An anonymous reader writes "The European Commission has put into effect a June 2009 agreement stating that major cellphone manufacturers should standardize their charging/data connection ports to the popular Micro-USB format. CEN-CENELEC and ETSI provided the standards by which these 14 companies will abide to make cell phone recharging and data transfer easy." Apple may even bring the next-gen iPad along for the ride.
I wish they would do this in the US. It's dumb that each company has their own chargers.
Shoulda woulda coulda. Is this actually going to have any effect on anything?
The claim that iPad 2 will have Micro-USB port in TFA hinges on this:
The most recent rumor, courtesy of the Mobile Review blog editor-in-chief Eldar Murtazin, says the iPad 2 will include a USB port. ...
AppleInsider reports that Murtazin is a trusted insider with good sources
That's as incorrect as it goes. He's an "editor-in-chief" of an organization that consists of precisely one person, namely him; and he is well known in Russian Internet community specifically for making wild and unsubstantiated predictions, often also claiming "insider info". The majority don't come true. So if that's the only source of that information, I would be wary about its correctness.
That said, if EU mandates micro-USB, it would seem that Apple won't get much choice there for iPhone, and then it would make sense for them to align the rest of the line-up with it, even if the law doesn't apply there. So it doesn't take an insider to make an educated guess here.
Is following the standard recommended or mandatory. If it's the latter, then I am not at all for it. Let demand meet supply.
So, are they legally allowed to recess the port in such a fashion that only the official cables can reach the "standard" Micro-USB port, or is that just a mistake on Samsung's part? (It's pretty much my only gripe with the phone FWIW.)
Insert self-referential sig here.
I fully know standards for all types of things have been around for a long time, but either they were voluntary or just a number a company could work towards or surpass but with a design of their discretion. I'm specifically thinking of a company wanting to include some type of induction scheme like a soniccare toothbrush to charge their phones -- perhaps in an attempt to waterproof it without it needing to be "plugged" into a charger.
And considering the push into smart phones and bigger and bigger batteries, will the 5 watts that USB MAY provide be enough to charge it in time? What about data transfer?
In fact, I'd not seen a device which had one before a few months ago when a couple of phones started to use it. Mini-USB has been the standard for years and is only fractionally larger whilst being much stronger.
I would suggest that that has been the primary reason for this choice - to continue the decades old tradition of delicate connectors to facilitate the upgrade path.
This has only been obvious for about ... 10 years.
Technologies change. But it's ridiculously obvious that they keep changing chargers so they can charge $29 bucks for a $11 piece of hardware with a new plug.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Apple does not have to put a microUSB port on the iphone 5 or the next iPad. They just have to offer an adapter. Seems like Apple lobbied for this exception and got it.
Didn't they mandate this back in late 2006. What the heck took the EU so long?
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
..but to really compete with the Jesus Phone and his family, there need to be a standard port not only for charging but also for remote controlling and A/V output in order to create a market for non-Apple cell phone and media player docking stations.
One of two things I see could happen.
1) Apple uses its sway (and breaks a few thumbs) in the EU so that they are exempt because they already use USB in a way.
2) They actually include the USB port (integrated into the dock connector slot somehow) and market it as a revolutionary feature that they thought of.
This is so ridiculously obvious that lots of libertarians will scream murder. Forcing a standard down our throat, oh the arrogance! I will only buy phones with a different connector just out of spite!
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Hi! Libertarian screaming bloody murder here. Oh, also a Mac girl. The MagSafe connector is one of most brilliant things about my Mac. I am SO GLAD that my computer has never been dragged kicking and screaming off the table when someone has walked across the cable.
Of course if we'd standardized on the horrible AC connector that most laptops use then I'd never have benefitted from this innovation.
Oh! Bloody Murder! How selfish is me.
Nokia must have gone down kicking and screaming...
Even where they include the Micro-USB and have obviously paid the licensing for it, they still charge only off that confounded Nokia Mini-jack.
Most devices are chargable over USB anyway (if you buy the leads to do it) so it makes no technical sense that the device end features a proprietary connection. Apple and others probably do it only to sell expensive 3rd party peripherals that licence the connector. So it's good to see some sense being imposed on the market.
APPL might need a whack on the side of the head first.
micro / mini / whatever, get to some standard already and stick with it. The economy and people are tired of fucking round.
Someone forgot to tell Nokia that. The micro usb in the N900 seems to be rated for 100 insertions, if you are lucky.
http://slashdot.org/submission/1180314/Nokia-N900-Hardware-failure---USB-port-falling-off
And what does anything you just said have to do with cellphone power and data connectors?
oh right. nothing at all.
Once again, misusing consumer technology. Using a data-technology to transfer power, doesn't sound like it'd be very power efficient. Fine by me, capitalism works best with waste. But I still wouldn't force the inefficient standard over an efficient alternative. Good way to waste money though.
Guess you could have expressed yourself a bit better, but you are correct; This could stifle innovation and freedom of choice, but worth noting that the standard is effectively optional, and does not exclude the addition of a separate power-source.
Now, if we could just get Apple to release the Patents on MagSafe, so we could use this for all laptop...
They could have skipped all this and gone straight for a Powermat. There was even talk of making batteries with the technology.
Did they fix the position and allow easy pluggable possibilities so you can have a cradle or car adapter?
No, of course they did not.
Atari rules... ermm... ruled.
I'm all for a single kind of connector for all kinds of devices, but... try plugging a micro USB into your phone or gps using only one hand in the dark. Now try the same with a round plug. I much prefer the latter. Micro USB seems to be much more difficult to insert, but maybe it's just me.
Does the spec detail exactly how a device wanting more than 100mA of power gets it when it's plugged into an adaptor rather than a computer? IIRC, the USB spec states that such requirements must be negotiated with the computer.
A little research suggests that this is simple - the PSU shorts the data lines, the phone recognises this and draws whatever current it needs. But AFAICT, if phone from Vendor A draws 800mA and your PSU is rated at 500mA - well, if it's been designed without any sort of protection (quite possible on a cheap & nasty adaptor) - that's the end of that.
It certainly great that a standard is being promulagted for the battery charger port. But please do remember that this does not mean that chargers are interchangeable, they might be, but manufacturers might insist using their own chargers for technical and non-technical reasons. But my main gripe is about the connector itself. It is extremely hard to almost impossible to be used by older people (that is a significant population). My parents had no problem using the Nokia connector (especially the thicker older one) but are finding extremely hard to insert the micro-USB connector to connect the charger on the new phone I bought them recently. Any thoughts/solutions ?
Now, if we could just get Apple to release the Patents on MagSafe, so we could use this for all laptop...
What I don't understand is how they got a patent on MagSafe in the first fucking place. Somewhere around here I have a cord from a waffle iron or something that is based on two contacts and a magnet. It appears to be bakelite and thus from the 1980s at the latest. The last time I knew where it was my camera's batteries were dead, because it apparently won't charge NiMH batteries from the wall wart, so I have to keep cycling sets through a charger.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I was surprised that my HTC phone uses the same quirky connector as my new Sony Reader. Now I find out it's a standard!
Pro Coffee Drinker
But they still would require to allow it to behave as a standard common charger if the authentication failed.
read point 2.5 in the MoU
`It is recognised that certain EPSs may have the capability to recognise connection to certain Mobile
Phones and in such cases operate outside the above specification; such capability shall not indicate
that such an EPS is not a Common EPS `
Because I find it annoying that motorola phones at the very least won't charge on my PC. Sure, they've got a mini-usb connector but when I plug it in the phone complains that it's not a valid charger because I don't have some driver installed. (And I can't find the right one for Win64. My K-Rzr was like that too but I managed to find a driver for it.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Next they'll be mandating what kind of light bulbs you have to use and what kind of healthcare you are required to buy. Oh, wait...
and either refusing to charge or deliberately drawing less power when you detect the wrong charger.
One could argue based on the power management portions of the USB specification that drawing less power meets the spec, but refusing to charge does not. A device MUST NOT* draw more than one unit of current (100 mA in USB 2.0) until it successfully associates to the host controller. After a device is configured, it MAY request up to five units (500 mA) but MUST NOT draw more than the host says is available. The recent Battery Charging v1.2 spec specifies a protocol on the data lines that devices can use to detect dumb chargers and chargers that can provide more power, so that devices know when they MAY deliberately draw more power. You SHOULD support manufacturers of phones and other devices that support USB Battery Charging.
* RFC 2119 modal adverbs != shouting.
I hate any non-USB interface on a phone.
Do you also hate video output interfaces such as HDMI? A smartphone that has been connected to a large monitor to play a video could output the video using USB Video Class as if it were a webcam, but then that'd be silly.
It has always been a bit of a limitation that officially you can only draw 500mA at 5V from a USB port, especially when FireWire can provide between 18 to 30V at up to 1A or more
This has changed. See my other comment.
leading to ridiculous things like a portable hard drive that requires two USB connectors - one for data and power, the other to draw more power, when a single FireWire cable will do.
Provided your computer has a FireWire port on the case. Apart from one Mac, I've never owned a PC with a FireWire port, not even the Dell netbook that I bought in 2010.
I have a similar connector on a 3-in-1 cook pot I bought at Wally world a few years ago.
Make America grate again!
It's ironic that HTC, who's not a party to the June 2009 agreement, has long standardised on micro-USB charging, but the other manufacturers are taking their time to catch up.
Dropbox drops it like it's hot.
Both our personal phones, my work phone, and the Kindle all use the same port, so chargers and data cables are interchangeable.
The only thing we've got that isn't is the Kodak camera, which may be mini-USB, but that's only for data transfer.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Because I've had 2 motorola phones, both with mini-usb ports and both required that you installed a driver or they wouldn't charge at all.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
why on earth do they have to pick the one us visually challenged people can't easily use???? They might as well made that damn thing flat with no visual features to tell which end is up because if you don't have 20/20 vision you can't tell!!! Fuck 2011!
Yeesh, this.
Why would such a fragile, crappy connector become a standard? Is it really that much smaller than mini-USB? It's even harder/impossible to figure out in the dark which way to plug it in.
I kinda assumed the connectors would technically get better and not worse. Especially when fumbling with the charger connection while trying to drive, just to have it fall out *again*, or connect too loosely to start charging.
I'm not a litigious guy, but I really wish someone would outlaw the micro-USB connector, FFS. It's a freaking liability! This is terrible news :-P
something. I've got a K-Rzr and a W376g which are both Motorola phones and both need drivers to charge.I guess it could be a carrier issue though. (The K-Rzr was a verizon phone, the W376g was tracfone and both were pretty locked down.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Standards for interoperability are fine... In this case they don't inhibit competition, and allow for more interoperability, and hence competition.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
>What I don't understand is how they got a patent on MagSafe in the first fucking place.
>*example of prior art*
The USPTO doesn't seem to care much about prior art these days.
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
It sucks that the plug fits only one way around.
I found out accidentally that LG phones standardized on micro-USB sometime within the last few years, and never looked back; family has 4 current LGs, several older ones (as backups), and they all fit the same charger. Opted out of other brands (bb esp) because of charger issue — hotel staff always have micro-USB chargers if you left yours at home.
Good to know HTC is standardized on m-USB too. They should advertise that $hit.
An EU standard means the following in practice:
The Germans will complain that everyone else does it inefficiently.
The Austrians will tell the Germans how to do it.
The Spanish will promise to do it tomorrow.
The Greeks will fake the documentation saying they've done it.
The Dutch will give parents and same-sex partners time off to do it.
The Czechs will charge foreigners extra for it.
Nobody will have any idea what the Portuguese are doing about it.
The Luxembourgers will interview everyone else on the radio about it.
The French will block the roads protesting about it.
The Danes will claim to have done it a thousand years ago.
The Swedes will only do it for six months a year.
The Polish will blame the Romanians and Hungarians for not doing it, or doing it too much, or not quite right.
The Maltese will earn a medal for it.
The Irish will invest their whole economy in it.
The Scottish will demand a subsidy to do it.
The Welsh won't do it until it's translated into a language that only people in Herefordshire and Shropshire actually use.
The English will do it immediately but moan about it forever after.
Turkey will pass a law making it illegal to do it in a headdress. The rest of the EU still won't let them join their club.
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
I'm no Apple fanboy - I don't even own any Apple gear, because I find them too controlling of equipment after sale. If I buy it, I figure it's mine, but Apple doesn't, so I don't buy Apple.
That said, there's a very good technical reason Apple uses the plug they do - it's not *just* data and charge. I believe it also does analog stereo out (although you can do that with USB also - HTC phones do stereo out over micro-USB), and can even be used for video out (which I believe USB cannot - well, you could probably do a digital video stream, but not analog output), and maybe some other things.
Point is, Apple decided that instead of putting 3 or 4 different connectors on their phone, they'd consolidate all the pins into a single small connector. Not an unreasonable technical decision. If they would just allow everyone else to use the connector too, perhaps it would make for a better 'standard' than USB.
(waving hand) Libertarian here. Except it seems to be happening here in the US without mandate. Imagine that.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Or, of course, you could avoid stringing the cable across walkways. The Magsafe philosophy, of protecting people from their own bad decisions, is something the government usually embraces. Maybe you should write your congressman.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Win Phone 7 has already standardized on micro-USB. Yayyyy!!
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Universal_Serial_Bus#Durability
"The newer Micro-USB receptacles are designed for up to 10,000 cycles of insertion and removal between the receptacle and plug, compared to 1500 for the standard USB and 5000 for the Mini-USB receptacle. This is accomplished by adding a locking device and by moving the leaf-spring connector from the jack to the plug, so that the most-stressed part is on the cable side of the connection. This change was made so that the connector on the less expensive cable would bear the most wear instead of the more expensive micro-USB device."
We both said a lot of things that you are going to regret.
You're right, they're tricky to connect without peering at the cable and the equipment. USB should have mandated that the top of the plug's sleeve be flat with an embossed USB logo, and the underside be slightly curved and smooth. Then you could tell the orientation of the plug without looking (or needing Braille sensitivity to distinguish the USB logo from the manufacturer's logo with your fingertips). Secondly, the receptacle should always be mounted the same way. It's usually longer side on top, but my LG Optimus S has the receptacle upside down.
=S
Yeah, it's unclear what will happen. I thought I was being clever by getting a Bluetooth headset with a car charger that I could use for my phones, but it's only rated for 180 mA, while my HTC Evo charger is 1.0 A.
Radio Shack's PointMobl car charger has "over current protection" and a red LED that lights to indicate USB power overload. (It also has short circuit protection, input reversed polarity protection, and a second USB port.)
The best solution is for even dumb chargers to implement the power negotiation spec.
=S
Does this even matter anymore now that things like duracell's mygrid are available?
there was a separate RS-232 port as well on older iPods, but I think it's gone now
Small nitpick: To the best of my knowledge, no iPod has had a separate RS-232 port.
Unless you're talking about the interface for the remote control lump on the headphone cable. That uses a proprietary 4-pin connector next to the headphone jack. I've always assumed it was something simpler, but I suppose it could be RS-232.
The earliest iPods came with a FireWire connector (the GameBoy connector) instead of the Dock connector; maybe that's what you're thinking of. The Dock connector replaced that.
Also, FireWire support was discontinued by Apple some time ago. Newer iTunes doesn't recognize it, and newer iPod's don't have the circuitry.
But I certainly agree that the Dock connector can provide way more than just power and USB. I just wish Apple wasn't so damn proprietary about it. But then, it's Apple.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I suppose you're being sarcastic, but the magsafe connector is much more useful than you apparently think it is. I've seen several laptops with broken power ports, because of pulling from side to side - and not from putting the cable across walkways (which is sometimes unavoidable, anyway). If you do anything besides sit your laptop down in one spot on a desk and never move it, you will get a lot of lateral force on the power cable.
On my macbook pro, the magsafe connector gets pulled off frequently - pretty much any time I'm not at a desk, which is fairly frequently (sitting in airports, sitting on a couch - anywhere you might take your laptop that isn't a desk). Rather than being annoyed by this, which I would be if it was any other type of connector, I'm glad - it means the connector and the port aren't getting undue stresses and won't prematurely break (not to mention that it's really easy to plug and unplug).
Well, the problem with Apple's standard power connectors is that they are really poorly designed. Apple does not get strain relief at all, or for that matter how to properly design the plug in the laptop. So with Apple laptops, power adapters with fraying wires, intermittent connections, and eventually a failed plug in the laptop is pretty common after a couple of years. In that sense, the Magsafe was a huge step forward for Apple, as it eliminated one of the big sources of stress that their standard power connectors were not designed to handle.
As someone who is used to Thinkpads, the Magsafe is not a big of a deal because I've never had an issue with the power adapter or the connector in the laptop even after years of use. Though the quick disconnect if the cable gets yanked might be a nice thing to have.
Libertarian here as well. I will never be able to look at a government regulation against a product and translate that into the free market and competition at work. Government and free markets (and hence true unfettered competition) are usually exclusive of one another. I would say they are mutually exclusive except there is the rare case that a harmful monopoly needs a check and balance, but I don't see that as the case here.
Symmetry for USB connectors! Down with progress!
No so you will be forced to buy the overpriced genuine product if yours fails or you get a 2nd hand phone with no charger.
I try in a store and order off the carrier website
You also said "Plus not being charged sales tax on that extra money is nice." As I understand it, online retailers such as Verizon Wireless are required to charge sales tax in any state where they have a brick-and-mortar store or warehouse.
You also said "or get huge discounts at Amazon or wherever." Where do you try products that are sold on Amazon but not in any store near you?
Meh.
The more I read this, the more it sounds like a solution to a problem that was solved over 5 years ago.
Here's the thing. Next to nothing has micro-usb connection on the *supply* side. But, there's plenty of devices that use standard size USB connetions to supply power. (Computers, airline seats, cars, some new AC electrical outlets) To connect any of these to a micro-usb charge cable, users will need, wait for it, another adaptor. It'd be funny if it wasn't so damn pathetic. This won't help consumers charge their devices any more easily than before.
And claims of cutting down waste and saving money by not needing to buy extra chargers?
Let's say I buy a new smart phone. I can plug it into my old charger. Wait, no I rubber-banded it to my old phone when I gave it to my mother/father/sister/brother/sexy neighbor next door... That's ok, I'll just use the charger that came with my new phone. Wait, to "save" the company didn't include one... I guess I'll just drive to the store and buy one, because that doesn't cost anything in time, gas, tolls, store mark-up, sales/use/VAT tax, etc... Wait..
I'm sure this legislation gives someone warm and fuzzy feelings, but let's look at this seriously, and call the EU out for legislating while drunk/stupid/etc. This solves nothing and will likely create more waste, not less.