GSM Association sets 2012 target date for universal cellphone charger
By Donald Melanson 
posted Feb 17th 2009 3:51PM
posted Feb 17th 2009 3:51PM
Well, this is certainly interesting. Just a couple of days after a top European Union commissioner mused about the need for a universal cellphone charger, the GSM Association has now come out and announced that it and 17 of its partner companies are indeed working on such a solution, and that they plan to have a common format in place by 2012. That rather ambitious date will be a bit easier to meet considering the group's choice of connector, micro-USB, which has already gained quite a bit of acceptance as a common format. The use of micro-USB apparently won't be firm requirement by 2012, however, with the GSMA simply saying that the "majority" of new phones sold by then will support what they're describing as the universal charging solution (or UCS), which itself will have to meet a number of strict requirements in order to be broadly compatible. Of course, while everyone including the likes of Nokia, Motorola, LG, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson have signed on with the GSMA, there are a few big names absent, not the least of which, unsurprisingly, is Apple, so there's certainly still quite a ways to go before we have a truly universal standard.[Via BBC News]
i hate propriety chargers. it means more cables i have to lug around. i used to use a Q9c and that used mini-usb which was great since i always had one with me for my PSP and 2.5" hard drive too. i could charge and use all those devices with the same cable and use it to tether to my laptop.
now i have a Treo 700wx and it bothers me to no end that i have to add 2 more cables to my bag since the Sync cable wont charge the phone without having a power adapter plugged into it too. standardization is good, well as long as they pick a good standard (which it seems they did).
who gives a ______ about apple signing on. i think everyone knows that they always do things their own way. i mean, do they even go to CES or MWC? sorry if i'm overly harsh, but this is def a company that says if we can't have it our way, we simply aren't doing it. Sony used to play by much the same rules w/ their MS and minidisc (at least here in the US) support. But as times have changed, so have they.
but on a side note, micro/mini usb is the way to do it. i'd honestly prefer mini usb...because even more devides use this.
Does it really take 3 years to come up with a Universal Charger ?
Third-party chargers with multiple tips already exists and many current phones use the mini USB plug already which may be a better choice but I understand that they want to squeeze more things into smaller phones, so maybe micro USB is the better choice.
We have three mobile phones in the house and all get charged with the same charger with mini USB. Two of them are Motorola and the third is from HTC. Since most phones can already be charged via USB and/or cigarette adapter, they should be able to come up with a universal charger much faster given that new mobile phone models are rolled out pretty much every 6 months.
micro USB is the way to go, IMO. Smaller, and a cheap adapter converts it to mini USB for legacy devices.