New EU Law Forces All Cellphone Chargers to Share Common Standard

[O maestre]

While I love the idea of standardized charging plugs, I REALLY don't like the idea of a government being able to decide how businesses are going to create products merely to be convenient. If it was bad enough that legislation was needed, then people would have stopped buying the one product that wasn't part of the standard.

You do realise that had the EU not stepped in the industry would not have regulated themselves on this issue. Inudstry standards are only applied when it can benefit construction process never on the consumer end. If this wasn't an area where government was needed than I don't no what could be.

In 2009 the European commission tried nudge the industry giants to willingly participate in a universal external power supply plan, and while most complied, the market leader in the west Apple did not and still has not. Do you remember how many different charger shapes there used to exist!? Thus this law is necessary... in my opinion.

We have seen time and time again business try to circumvent legislation or employ anticompetitive practices or fixed retailer pricing. I don't know where this myth has come from that consumers can force change in business practices of large companies or that fines will stop them. Do you think there will ever come a time when Microsoft and Apple decide to go open source on their own? Proprietary technology was invented by corporations for a reason, and it is not for consumer benefit.

I don't think I'll ever convince you, but I would however like to know what do you have against being protected? What is wrong about someone doing policy to watch your back? I am thrilled that our European politicians actually do something for us, instead of risking a gridlock every month.

 

[O maestre]

I wonder how this is going to work. Android devices all share a micro usb port. However voltages and amperes differ amongst chargers. You can really fuck up your battery if you constantly use a wrong charger. Still, prob not a fuck that is given so... Go eu

Glad to see someone out there realizes that the voltage and current matter more than just the shape of the port. And if the EU is going to try to regulate those then the EU might as well just design the damn phone. Power requirements are based on the design not the other way around.

It is more a question of convenience, let me take you back before 2009, where the EU nudged the industry to do this voluntarily. Back then the smartphones of that generation had a low battery life that wouldn't get you through the day, and had proprietary chargers. So imagine you forget your charger at home and you ask around the office for a Samsung chager, but everyone else has a HTC or Iphone, you are screwed.

Now it doesn't matter because the Samsung and the HTC have the same charger, the Iphone is still proprietary.

As for voltages, I haven't heard of any damage being caused by under volting, you also forget that USB are also a standard that cannot go above 5 volts, for consumer battery charging, so as long as manufacturers design their products around an already present limitation they should be fine. I am having a hard time feeling sorry for the poor tech industry, if the consumer demands convenience then they better deliver or make room for a company that can.

I would understand if the law required use of new tech or bend the laws of physics to comply. But USB has been around since the 90's it's limitations and applications should be well known

 

[FalloutJack]

The rest of that post pretty much sums it up.

Again, this is beleid by past activity, so why would it be different now?

Why not? It's not guaranteed to actually work. It's a matter of who wants it more, period.

 

[loa]

Good.
Less proprietary bullshit is good.

 

[Madman123456]

this wouldn't happen in america; people would see that as an attack on the freedom of those companies and while everyone generally trusts companies to have enough freedom already all fear that any cut on freedom would just be the first step or something.

I kinda agree with the "freedom" defense but sadly, consumers can not be trusted to shape the market in ways that are good for the consumer or the market itself or the environment and i can't even blame them all that much.
Advertising industry has had quite a few years of experience in deception after all.
So lawmakers listening to people with knowlegde of the matter and acting in ways they thing will be good for the customer is sorely needed.

 

[J Tyran]

I wonder how this is going to work. Android devices all share a micro usb port. However voltages and amperes differ amongst chargers. You can really fuck up your battery if you constantly use a wrong charger. Still, prob not a fuck that is given so... Go eu

It will be standardised so that all new chargers and sockets are compatible regardless of the device. Any phone will be able to use any generic or branded micro-usb charger because all of them will run on the same current and voltage. You'd still need converters for different national mains standards though. Or at least that's my understanding of the situation.

With USB chargers the voltage and current don't matter for any device manufactured after 2007, the USB Implementers Forum released a unified Battery Charging Specification which standardised the pins and the voltage. Some chargers will provide more current but for modern devices that have that specification[footnote]Which is anything by a major manufacturer[/footnote] all that means is that if you use a USB port or charger with less current than the one your device came with it will charge more slowly, if you use one with a higher current it may charge faster but only up to a limit that prevents damage to the battery.

 

[s_h_a_d_o]

If it was bad enough that legislation was needed, then people would have stopped buying the one product that wasn't part of the standard.

Methinks you underestimate the tolerance for abuse of the average consumer. :|
OT: *stands* *applauds*

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

I want that here Canada. Make it happen!

 

[Royas]

Well, pretty much everything uses micro-usb except Apple stuff and a very small handful of tablets anyway. I'm actually curious how Apple is going to handle not using their Lightning connector.

They'd sell an adapter plug to make up the difference, I would think.

They already do, naturally. It just wouldn't be Apple if they didn't charge outrageous sums for a million and one shitty accessories for their outrageously priced stuff.

But the point of the article is that they will have to use a standard port from the start, without adaptors. And then Apple will be sad because it won't be a unique, overpriced snowflake any more.

Oh, good luck actually getting them to behave. Putting aside your opinion on the product itself for a moment - because I lean not one way or the other on the matter - I know how companies think. They won't do anything they don't want to do if they can find a way around it. And naturally, if they still have to, they're dead-set on finding some way to recup a loss.

Which means they will wait for the law to almost come into force, then challenge it. The challenges to the law will drag on for years and years, and when they lose the challenge, they'll find some other grounds to refuse to cooperate. In the end, by the time Apple is actually force to do anything, USB will be out dated and obsolete and a new law will have to be put into place, that they can then challenge again...

You can't force companies like Apple to do anything, not with the level of legal staff they have available. They can out-lawyer anyone, including any government or union on the face of the planet.

 

[FalloutJack]

Well, pretty much everything uses micro-usb except Apple stuff and a very small handful of tablets anyway. I'm actually curious how Apple is going to handle not using their Lightning connector.

They'd sell an adapter plug to make up the difference, I would think.

They already do, naturally. It just wouldn't be Apple if they didn't charge outrageous sums for a million and one shitty accessories for their outrageously priced stuff.

But the point of the article is that they will have to use a standard port from the start, without adaptors. And then Apple will be sad because it won't be a unique, overpriced snowflake any more.

Oh, good luck actually getting them to behave. Putting aside your opinion on the product itself for a moment - because I lean not one way or the other on the matter - I know how companies think. They won't do anything they don't want to do if they can find a way around it. And naturally, if they still have to, they're dead-set on finding some way to recup a loss.

Which means they will wait for the law to almost come into force, then challenge it. The challenges to the law will drag on for years and years, and when they lose the challenge, they'll find some other grounds to refuse to cooperate. In the end, by the time Apple is actually force to do anything, USB will be out dated and obsolete and a new law will have to be put into place, that they can then challenge again...

You can't force companies like Apple to do anything, not with the level of legal staff they have available. They can out-lawyer anyone, including any government or union on the face of the planet.

Exactly. These situations can as much crop up as they don't. It depends entirely on who, why, and where...but you can almost certainly bet on it if a company is big enough and they want it badly enough.

 

[faefrost]

So what the EU is saying under law, If I understand this correctly, is that they do not want any further development of cell phone batteries or a move to lower power or alternative charging methods for handheld mobile devices? They want to limit it all to the voltages and mechanisms that can be passed through an aging USB standard? BRILLIANT!

How to kill any technological innovation in one easy step. get the government involved.

 

[TallanKhan]

I suspect in the longer term this will just translate into people having to buy the chargers as extras rather than packaging them with the phones.

My worry is that this will hurt future innovation in charging and battery tech. Yes MicroUSB is at the forefront of technology now but what about in ten years time? If you set that as the standard that everything must be compatible with then you limit the potential for development, after all, no company will spend the billions of dollars required to develop the next leap forward in battery cell tech if the end result is a piece of kit that isn't compatible with mandatory charging method.

If you allow them to do so, industry standards evolve on their own without putting up barriers to further advancement. For instance look at the near universal adoption of DVD for games and movies, this happened organically over a relatively short space of time following the advent of DVD, however, when the time was right Blu-Ray was developed and is gradually superseding DVD. This kind of innovation comes about when one player in an industry (or a group thereof) break away from the pack to do something new. If what they do is successful you get the next big thing. Now if you chain everyone to a single standard then companies don't have the opportunity to break away and try something new.

Now I do accept this would have benefits, such as companies like Apple being reigned in a little in terms of how royally they are allowed to screw their customers. However, people aren't mindless, and governments shouldn't be obliged to protect people from themselves, anyone who buys an iPhone knows (or has had the opportunity to know) how Apple operate and if they still choose to buy a product deliberately designed to be incompatible with everything else that really is their look out. People should accept some responsibility and if they don't like how an organisation does business they shouldn't buy what they sell, simple. This is the reason I don't own a single Apple device.

People often talk of companies being anti-consumer and of their obligations to their customers. However, there is one simple fact that everyone overlooks, if no one brought a company's products it would very quickly go out of business. The people responsible for a company's success or failure, and by extension that of it's business model, are its customers.

 

[Adam Locking]

While I love the idea of standardized charging plugs, I REALLY don't like the idea of a government being able to decide how businesses are going to create products merely to be convenient. If it was bad enough that legislation was needed, then people would have stopped buying the one product that wasn't part of the standard.

Pretty much this. I'm really torn about how to feel on this one, because non-standard chargers are a total nightmare, but on the other hand, business freedoms and all that. On the third hand however, if it pisses off Apple, I am all for it.

 

[Vegosiux]

So what the EU is saying under law, If I understand this correctly, is that they do not want any further development of cell phone batteries or a move to lower power or alternative charging methods for handheld mobile devices? They want to limit it all to the voltages and mechanisms that can be passed through an aging USB standard? BRILLIANT!

How to kill any technological innovation in one easy step. get the government involved.

That's, uh...not how it works. It was actually explained just eleven posts above yours how it's set up! Also, the European Commission isn't exactly "the government" at all...

But yes, well, no, you do not understand this correctly, but I suppose nobody should ever pass up a chance to rail against the soul-eating space lizards government, or something...I guess?

 

[Gormech]

What about that charge station thing where you just set the device on top of it? Get rid of all the chargers.

 

[Veylon]

What about that charge station thing where you just set the device on top of it? Get rid of all the chargers.

Standards can always be changed. Down the road, they'll likely make it required that all cell phones can work with all wireless chargers to eliminate proprietary systems there. Write your EU senator/representative/whatever!

 

[Smooth Operator]

So what the EU is saying under law, If I understand this correctly, is that they do not want any further development of cell phone batteries or a move to lower power or alternative charging methods for handheld mobile devices? They want to limit it all to the voltages and mechanisms that can be passed through an aging USB standard? BRILLIANT!

No they do not say anything about batteries or power consumption, they just want everyone to support a universal socket with the same voltage, just like the power sockets in your house which were incidentally also all over the place until governments came down with a standards hammer.
How companies then put that power to use is up to them, and this in no way prohibits companies to add their own shit on top as long as the standard stuff works.

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

While it's less of a problem than in the past, I'm glad the EU is doing this. It should cut down on e-waste, at least a little bit.

Now, I doubt the USA would ever really pass legislation like this, but they should. It would be great to have a common standard over here, as well.

my thinking is, a company will mass produce all their stock the same, so chances are this will effect you guys in the US simply by the fact companies wont want to make a phone with one port for EU then make the same phone with a different port for the rest of the world

 

[Jamieson 90]

Hah, this well intentioned piece of legislation designed to make life easier for consumers is clearly an utterly unacceptable violation of British sovereignty and independence. Thank goodness the good, hard working, totally not racist and/or homophobic folks at UKIP who will keep us safe from such abuses.

#DailyMail

I think you might be underestimating how many people dislike the EU (politically anyway), it's not just racists and UKIP nut jobs. I actually like immigrants and the peoples of Europe, I think it's a good thing that we trade and that we get on. What I don't like though is how undemocratic the whole process is. The EU bureaucrats are unelected yet they have the most significant say in UK matters, and it's totally unrepresentative as well; places like Malta have more votes per percent of population than we (UK) do, meaning we're back with rotten boroughs again. So yes, the EU can be great for immigration and the freedom of movement, it can be great for trade, the environment and consumers but it's still undemocratic, and that for me is the sticking point, especially when there are countries at this very moment fighting for democracy and here we are throwing it away.

You should watch some of the videos published by the Oxford Union, they have a whole debate on this and they're very enlightening.

 

[O maestre]

So what the EU is saying under law, If I understand this correctly, is that they do not want any further development of cell phone batteries or a move to lower power or alternative charging methods for handheld mobile devices? They want to limit it all to the voltages and mechanisms that can be passed through an aging USB standard? BRILLIANT!

How to kill any technological innovation in one easy step. get the government involved.

I don't see how this excludes innovation, regardless of how new charging methods are built they need to get the power from somewhere. The USB directive is no different than the standardization of power sockets, to this end the USB is no different than a universal cable. Unless your system requires more than 5 volts, which I seriously doubt when talking about small radio devices filled with TTL components, in fact much space is used for voltage regulators in mobile devices. Besides boost converters are pretty easy to implement and don't take up too much space if a device needs higher voltage.

It is certainly better than having dozens of proprietary chargers like before 2009 where the EU gently nudged the industry giants to comply. Well except Apple, most mobile device manufacturers have implemented USB charging as I mentioned, but not Apple. Innovation or proprietary shenanigans?

Also the directive has not included any technical specifications yet, I would very much doubt that they would leave out a window for newer methods like wireless charging.

I only wish they would force laptop manufacturers to do the same, can you imagine using chargers regardless of brand? How is that not a win for the consumer?