Thursday, 19 February 2009

Single charger breakthrough for mobiles

Most of us have a drawer full of obsolete chargers at home, but this needless waste could soon be a thing of the past because in future it will be possible for manufacturers to ship new phones without chargers. The major mobile phone operators have jointly agreed on a micro USB standard for all mobile phone chargers. The scheme includes Orange, Telefonica, Vodafone, 3, AT&T, mobilkom Austria, T-Mobile, Telenor Telstra, Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, LG and Sony Ericsson.

The scheme was announced with week by Rob Conway of the GSM Association. He didn’t say when the certified compatible charger will appear but the GSMA has set a target to ship 50 per cent of phones with this charger by 2012.

Some commentators are concerned that applications like high definition video will need a better connector than micro USB. But even if a second connector is needed for these, any kind of standardisation is a step forward.

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