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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.
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.
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.
Micro-USB is stronger one, rather than Mini-USB, or at least is supposed to. And it is designed so that it's the cable that breaks first, instead of the device.
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
That's not the fault of the actual connector. Nokia just failed to attach it to the circuit-board properly.
It is only surface-mounted in the N900, no solder-through pins or resin.
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.
Someone is gouing to have to spend some time in cell block number 9.
Of course, in the USA, consumers have no rioghts, because APPL has bought them all.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Afaict 5V is about right for charging a single lithium ion/polymer cell. Go much higher and unless you use a switched mode converter you are just wasting more power. Go much lower and you don't have enough headroom to charge it properly. Most of the phone "chargers" I saw seemed to be tending to 5V output even before the use of a USB connector came on scene.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Cell phone manufacturer had a chance to get it right, but for years they chose to use custom connectors and make a killing selling overpriced chargers and cables.
Sometimes the invisible hand of the market needs a little nudging from the mighty foot of the state.
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.
Camera manufacturers have been making weather-resistant DSLRs for years now (there have been well known instances where entire EOS 1Ds and EOS 7D Canon DSLR+Lenses combinations have been dunked into 3' of sea water and continued working without any problem), and they have a lot more connectors to contend with as well as a couple of microphones and speakers. It should not be difficult at all for phone manufacturers to start offering water-resistant smartphones.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
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