Firms are still faffing about the Universal Power Adapter:
In China, where 500 million cell phones were manufactured last year, the government has regulated that all cell phone chargers, including those imported, have a standard USB interface and output voltage, so consumers don’t need a new one with every new phone.
Such regulations are unlikely in the U.S., but if the industry doesn’t get its act together then the federal government may start to intervene in some way
Comments
0 responses to “Hurry up and make this happen”
There is absolutely no technical reason that I can think of why this can’t already happen for all current mobiles. My last 5 mobiles have all been able to charge from a USB port, so are all using the same standard, but the plug in 3 of them has been proprietary. One of the worst offenders is [removed since I work for them] who sell phones that are quite clearly made by HTC and rebadged but have the mini-USB port replaced by a proprietary one.
The linked article suggests that the fear of lawsuits is an issue – say you plug yer ipod into a universal charger, it goes on fire, lots of people die. That kind of thing. So having unique chargers avoids that, because the manufacturer is completely in charge – don’t use the official iPod charger, the fire’s your fault. Something along those lines. And I suspect it’s a genuine fear, which is why an industry standard is necessary to protect the manufacturers.
But seriously, the lack of a single charger is ridiculous – it’s wasteful, and it’s really annoying. You’d think they’d have sorted it out by now.
>>The linked article suggests that the fear of lawsuits is an issue
Bollocks. If it was fear of lawsuits then surely they would favour universal chargers. Chances are it wouldn’t be their charger/unit combi that went up so they could blame the little 3rd party guy and escape culpability. I bet you that microsoft would’ve loved that when the xbox started blowing up.
I’ve got an HTC PDA and a GPS unit that both run off a 5V USB charger (That’s a lot of acronyms/initialisms in one sentence!)without any problem at all. Both designed and made by completely different companies and not designed, specifically, to be compatible. But they are.
If that theory was correct, why have nokia changed their charger socket several times recently without a change in voltage or amperage? I’ve got several chargers that are identical except for the size of the plug.