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EU Committee Votes To Make All Smartphone Vendors Utilize a Standard Charger
Deathspawner writes "The EU has been known to make a lot of odd decisions when it comes to tech, but one committee's latest vote is one that most people will likely agree with: Standardized smartphone chargers. If passed, this decision would cut down on never having the right charger handy, but as far as the EU is concerned, this is all about a reduction of waste. The initial vote went down on Thursday, and given its market saturation, it seems likely that micro USB would be the target standard. Now, it's a matter of waiting on the EU Parliament to make its vote."
This bill had better have an expiration date, or else it might well interfere with new technologies like (perhaps) wireless power transmission.
How will my iPhone possibly work if it has to be charged with a tool as common as a wall wart? Eeeww. It's 20% less cool than a Lightning cable!
John
Manufacturers can still keep their bottom line by making cables and connectors so bad they have to be replaced even more often than before. As a matter of fact, I think that already happened.
I agree. All the waste is really in the charger itself, not in the cable. As much as I would like Apple to switch to a standard USB connection, I have no problem with their choice. Laptop charges on the other hand are a completely different story. They should also look into standardized replaceable batteries if they are really focused on cutting waste.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I thought there was an international law against governing bodies making common sense decisions?
Someone is going to receive a very sternly written letter.
Nope. They're requiring a micro-USB connector on the phone itself. All phone chargers and their connecting wires will be required to interoperate with it.
John
No need to legislate this. Most people I know go out of their way to avoid buying products that don't charge with a USB connector if they can avoid it - at least computer-related products.
Me, the last device I bought with a special charger was a Casio Exilim camera that has unique enough features that I had no other choice. But I hate that charger each time I have to carry it with me on business trips when I already carry a USB charger that takes care of all my other devices.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Much as I don't like to like Apple's "lock-you-in" marketing strategies, I have to agree that the Lightning connector is the best engineered small-form-factor connector of its type that I've used on any portable device. It's secure, it's invertible, and it is designed to not wear out through forceful insertions. The old "universal" connector was awful by comparison.
I find micro-USB to be annoyingly fragile, although that could be due to cheap, under-engineered connectors with weak physical board mounting hardware.
Oh, well. I live in America, so I expect Apple will continue to provide the US market with Lightning connectors, just to cheese off the EU. And they will no doubt continue to keep the Lightning connector on EU based iPads, just to remind people that they voted in a bunch of intrusive politicians.
John
There are millions of people that have iPhones, none of them are your friends? This whole "must be chargeable with micro USB" was already mandatory in the EU, they are just changing the regulations so you don't need an adapter like the iPhone currently requires. They had to, because evidently vendors weren't having it and found ways around it, so yes, there really is a need to legislate this.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Ah, Apple. Dock Connector had its stressed parts on the connector, which means that if something breaks, it's most likely the cheap cable. MicroUSB does this too. Lightning has its stressed parts in the receptacle - so the parts that break the most are inside the expensive phone.
Great idea, huh?
So did I until recently. Turns out it was an optional standard. I'm guessing they're just upgrading it to mandatory.
Not to mention the thing where the lightning cable apparently has a chip in the cable itself to verify itself with the phone. Turning the "cheap and easily replaceable" bit into "an unnecessary expensive and wasteful thing."
The lightning cable and connector should die, and Apple should be forced to use micro USB just like everyone else.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
They won't. They'll probably be allowed to ship an adapter with the phone, though.
At first glance this is a fantastic idea, but it may not have been thought out all the way. I like micro usb chargers and even as an Apple fan was dismayed when they developed lighting instead of going micro usb. However Apple did have good reason to develop the lighting port - it's much more than a charging port. This is slashdot and we talk about Apple enough that I am sure enough of you understand what makes the lighting port leaps and and bounds more advanced the micro usb. Therein lies the problem. Technology is moving forward faster and faster and in a matter of time the obsolescence of the micro usb charger will rear its head as new technologies demand something with more advanced capabilities. It's all well and good for many reasons to have a standard port, but this cannot happen without a plan to reconvene every five years to settle on a new industry wide port with more capabilities. This of course brings us right back to the waste issue, and demanding a stop-gap generation of phones that support micro usb and whatever is next would be too costly for manufacturers. We can't live on micro usb forever and so the problem comes back full circle. In this situation adapters are not practical and are too easy to loose. If we are going to have a standard port, we need to first come up with something wicked advanced that will last as long as micro usb has and then go through a period of extreme waste with some recycling as we move over. It would be nice if Apple would just open up their lighting port for everyone to implement - but that of course will not happen. In other words: I sure as hell don't know what to do about the situation.
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It does if you sell phones.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
A fine idea.
What about laptop chargers too ? Every laptop I've owned has had a different charger plug. In some cases machines made by the same manufacturer have different plugs. Have a set of standard charger ratings and a standard way for the laptop to detect it.
Can you be a bit more specifc? What exactly is crappy about USB?
Also, do you still remember the time before USB? *shudder*
This is just making mandatory the Common External Power Supply EU standard. That's been a voluntary standard since 2009, and most cell phone vendors in Europe have been on board for years. It's simple enough - phones use a MicroUSB B connector, and chargers use a USB-A connector if they have a connector at the charger end.
China standardized on MicroUSB-B back in 2007. The GSM consortium standardized on MicroUSB-B in 2009.
Apple already got an exemption last time this issue came up in the EU.
This isn't the first time this was addressed by the EU.
The last law only affected the part that plugged into the wall, so Apple got an exemption there.
Now they are specifying BOTH ends of the connectors must meet the standard. Its about time.
Also, selling phones without a charger, for 10 bucks less would make sense as well.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
That is actually the idea. You will be able to use your existing charger with your new phone, so less landfill waste will be produced.
I have a charger with 4 USB ports, so my phone, iPod, iPad and Kindle can be charged at the same time using just one wall socket.
Didn't everybody in Europe switch to Micro USB a couple of years ago?
Everyone significant except Apple did. Apple decided to keep using custom connectors for the phone end. They make adaptors but they don't include them as standard, genuine apple ones are fairly pricey and they don't really solve the problem (who wants to carry an adaptor arround with them all the time, that's barely better than carrying the USB cable for the phone arround all the time).
I wonder if this is related (unofficially of course) to apple's recent aggressive move over third party lightning (apples current charge/data port) cables.
Sigh - if they could still use 12V we could just use simple car adapters
Note that car electrics are only nominally 12V. For reasonably reliable operation you need to be able to run continuously anywhere from about 10V to about 15V and to tolerate significant dips and spikes outside that range.
It's actually easier to produce a stable 19V from a car supply than a stable 12V. For a stable 19V you just need some surge protection upfront and then a boost converter. For a stable 12V you would need a converter that can convert both up and down which is quite a bit more complex.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Didn't everybody in Europe switch to Micro USB a couple of years ago?
No. Unless you don't include Apple in "everybody".
Not that the EU passed a law... I get that... its just sad that they needed to do that.
The vendors should have created their own standards a long time ago to not be this obnoxious. Every phone needs a new charger even though practically all of them are just USB. But they all have a different type of USB connector which is different for no apparent reason.
Look, obviously there are times and reasons to have different types of charges. But they seem to go out of their way to confuse the situation.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
If you're going to futz around with a GPS device on a moving motorcycle, make sure you don't wear a helmet, either. And make sure you're signed up as an organ donor.
If manufacturers are too stupid to come up with a standard on their own, then someone needs to force them to.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
My three year old has picked up and walked off with one of my five current micro-USB devices at least once (probably a dozen times with the tablet) while they were still plugged in. I do have a healthy supply of partially functioning cables, but I've never had to repair a port.
++
That cable is what turned me away from Apple. Around 2007/8 I replaced my iPod and the video cables I had for my previous pod wouldn't work with the new pod because of some kind of verification chip. The old cables sold on Amazon for (literally) six cents (on sale, obvs but still) and Apple's cable cost $49.99. That's ridiculous! That iPod was my last Apple purchase which is a shame because Apple makes some great products.
Micro-USB may be better than many alternatives, but it's still a poor choice. It's tiny and polarized, so it's hard to see which way it needs to be oriented, particularly in poor lighting. That's a rather common problem. Why couldn't they get it right?
In contrast, Apple's Lightning connector works the same in either orientation.
Right. Humanity has gotten so d@mn lazy that - in case of not being able to see the correct orientation - rotating the plug by 180 is too f'ing hard to do ... ... e.g., as you mentioned it - micro USB cable: ~1-2$. Lightning cable: ~20$
Sorry, but many of proprietary "advances" are just ways of securing companies' income, with minimal advantages for the customer
And what happens when micro-USB is deprecated? Do we go back to some EU overseer commission for approval again?
Yes, and this is good, because it means that the manufacturers need to propose a new standard connector rather than introducing a new proprietary one and reopening the compatibility wars.
This is one of the least significant problems facing most societies today. No wonder EU birthrates are dropping - there must be something in the water.
By that reasoning, I must demand to know why you are here wasting time on this silly little issue rather than spending all your time eliminating illiteracy and child poverty while simultaneously developing the cures for AIDS and cancer.
It's quite practical to deal with the not-most-important-but-still-quite-important problems even bfore the big and difficult ones have been resolved.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'