News - Mobile phone makers agree to adopt standardised mini-USB charger

[HEXUS]

Life looks set to get a whole lot easier as various mobile phone manufacturers agree to adopt a single charger for all devices.

Read more.

[TheVoice]

Who is going to make sure that say, a Samsung charger works on a Sony Ericsson phone though? Are they going to ensure that voltages etc are all compatible for each-other's models?

[PeterStoba]

Who is going to make sure that say, a Samsung charger works on a Sony Ericsson phone though? Are they going to ensure that voltages etc are all compatible for each-other's models?

Don't be silly, that won't happen!

[jonny4288]

i was under the impression that as usb is a standard, all chargers would therefore operate at the same voltage?

[NuShuttle]

http://members.omtp.org/Lists/ReqPub...ity%20v1.0.pdf

Uses USB 2.0 standards - http://www.usb.org/developers/docs/

Cheers

NS

[Workaholic]

Hmm no mention of SE, I'm both happy and not at this..

Does that mean that they're gonna keep their fast port (and all older legacy accessories are still gonna work..)

Expanding on its green-saving credentials, it adds that the new charger could consume up to 50 per cent less power, too.

Possibly meaning they take longer to charge due to the smaller amount of power supplied....

[Biscuit]

if the supply values that the different companies used was different between chargers, how would this actually reduce waste? it would be the exact same as it is now but everything would look the same.... which would also mean a lot of people would probs damage their phone due to assuming a charger would work because of the fact it fits, hereby causing more waste.

Come on fellas put your brain into action a bit, the point in this is so that companies dont have to keep supplying new chargers with every phone. Instead they can assume that you have one from a previous phone which reduces waste. Its beyond me why they didnt do this kind of thing in the first place in all fairness.

[Workaholic]

if the supply values that the different companies used was different between chargers, how would this actually reduce waste? it would be the exact same as it is now but everything would look the same.... which would also mean a lot of people would probs damage their phone due to assuming a charger would work because of the fact it fits, hereby causing more waste.

Come on fellas put your brain into action a bit, the point in this is so that companies dont have to keep supplying new chargers with every phone. Instead they can assume that you have one from a previous phone which reduces waste. Its beyond me why they didnt do this kind of thing in the first place in all fairness.

Nokia did for quite a few years until they decided to use a smaller jack plug..

[Biscuit]

it was standard for all nokia phones... which is basically the same thing as all the other companies did just for all their own phones.

[jbro75]

about time

[Ferral]

At long last, standarisation has been talked about for well over a year now in the industry. Wish they would now have standard 3.5mm jacks for the handsfree across the board so you could just go out and buy basic headphones.

[Barrichello]

Glad to see RIM are well ahead of this.

One of the other things i love about my Blackberry bold, is that its main charge source is USB. Main charge is usb on travel plug. It can of course still charge from pc as well (like my old payg Sony phone) but in this case just having a standard usb input for all charging on it is a bonus in my eyes as can charge of a PC with any standard usb cable. Also has the standard 3.5mm jack

#edit = long gone now at work is the asking around, "anyone got a Nokia charger" or anyone got a "SE charger" long may it continue.

[Biscuit]

HTC have been using the mini USB plug for as long as i can remember so i got stacks of these cables kicking around.

[Singh400]

Bout time! Although, I suspect some of the more sneaky companies will have customized the ports/plugins to keep the money coming in...