Pack your Bags and Update that Passport, Europe Finally has a Universal Cell Phone Charger
This is what you do when you accidentally run over your cellphone charger with a lawnmower and have to call the girl of your dreams to reschedule your date that night but can’t because your cellphone is dead and shes in your contacts but you don’t remember her number so you can’t use a land line. (inhales
- Go to store.
- Have employee tell you they don’t have any charger that works with your 2 year old Nokia POS
- Scream at employee
- Call Nokia
- Dial 0
- Dial 0
- Smash the 0 button
- Give up
When you break or lose your cellphone charger you’re basically out of luck. Many cellphones made use a different charger. That’s all about to change though, at least in Europe.
The European Commission was just as annoyed as everyone else with this issue so they’ve worked with a bunch of the top names and uttered “make it so.” Which means, as of next year, almost any cellphone will work with almost any charger.
They worked with 10 major cellphone makers, including Apple, Motorola, Samsung and Research In Motion. This also means that once you upgrade to a new phone you’ll actually have a spare charger instead of a fancy black rope that gathers dust in one of your drawers.
Hopefully it doesn’t take long for the idea to jump across the pond.
almost.
—as of next year, almost any cellphone will work with almost any charger.
Wut?
They mean that as of next year, any charger and phone purchased new after that point will have interchangable chargers. They’re not saying that you’ll be able to plug in your 2009 charger into a 2011 phone.
They HAVE done this in the States. The agreed upon standard is now the USB “Micro-B” standard. This is standard mentioned here, as well as the standard agreed upon for the US, Asia (Samsung, LG, Sony, Nokia, Moto), GSM, and so on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Serial_Bus#Mobile_device_charger_standards
How did the author here not perform at least a cursory Google search?
I really wish they would do something like this in the United States. It would be nice if I forgot my phone charger I could use one of my co-workers or friends.