Universal mobile phone charger on the way
For years mobile phones manufacturers have used various different chargers, but that may soon be a thing of the past. At the GSM World Conference in Barcelona, 17 mobile phone companies have signed-on to adopt a single charger interface standard. The standard on which these companies have agreed to support is the Micro USB format.
The benefits for creating a charger standard are probably greater than they seem at the outset. Firstly, with the new standard you would theoretically be able to buy new phones without ever having to buy a new charger for any phone, no matter what brand of phone you purchase. Second, this new universal charger format is meant to be more energy efficient in reducing standby energy consumption by 50%. There is also the potential reduction of 51,000 tons of duplicate chargers, which benefits both the companies as well as the consumer.
This charger interface development would truly make the mobile phone industry much more environmentally friendly as well as consumer friendly. Needless to say, this is a very big deal. Some of the companies that have already agreed to support the Micro-USB charger standard are 3 Group, AT&T, KTF, LG, mobilkom austria, Motorola, Nokia, Orange, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telenor, Telstra, T-Mobile and Vodafone. Companies that have yet to support the new charger standard are Apple, Palm and RIM. We can look forward to this Universal Charger Standard (UCS) to be available worldwide by 2012.
See the official press release at the GSM World website.
Filed Under: Mobile News
