Wednesday 18 February 2009

Universal Phone Charger

One charger to power them all,
... and in the darkness help them.

Sorry, couldn't help myself. Anyway the news that a bunch of mobile phone companies have joined together to create a universal phone charger is good news -- although it won't affect me too much.

For the last few years I have been very careful when buying portable electronic items to ensure that they all use the same charger/data port. This means that when I travel I can now take one power converter plug (assuming I'm leaving the UK), my laptop, one mini USB cable and then be able to power and/or access my phone, GPS track logger, and both digital cameras. The only thing that I take with me that doesn't use mini USB is the iPod but at least I can still charge that from the laptop even if I do have to use Apple's proprietary connector.

As long as the phone companies standardise to the same mini USB plug that all my devices use, buying a new phone should become a lot simpler. Shame they don't seem to be committed to doing this until 2012 though.
18 February 2009 at 18:41 , Graham Edwards said...

Wonderful. As someone with three mobile phones (don't ask but at the moment I do need them if I wish easy and affordable communications) all of which (even though two are Nokia) have different chargers which need carting across the world and two adapters (one was bought in NZ)I welcome this.
In fact when I travel a kilo or perhaps more is made up of cables and adapters and spare batteries for cameras. And that's not counting the duplicated ones that permanently live in either N Z or Scotland.
I do find the design of the Apple adapter very clever and light though.

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