EU Commissioner Wants Standard For Mobile Phone Connectors 374
Jantastic writes "European Commissioner Günter Verheugen wants manufacturers of mobile phones to come up with a standard connector for chargers and microphones. If companies fail to do so, proposed legislation should speed up this process. In theory, this could improve competition, while enabling longer life cycles for these devices."
Re:Sounds good to me (Score:5, Funny)
Any reason why we (consumers) should be against this?
Well, since this is the government, they'll inevitably come up with a standard where the connector is 6 inches long and 3 inches wide, has 874 tiny easily breakable pins, and requires a power brick that weighs 20 pounds. Also, the chargers will cost $438,000.
Re:In theory, this could improve competition (Score:2, Funny)
Communism works, but is not escalable to more than one person.
I suggest... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:USA Competition! (Score:2, Funny)
The best part is that, if I forget my adapter, the company makes tons of profits on selling after-market power adapters! They make so much money on those $30 aftermarket adapters that they can afford to drop their prices elsewhere!
This also means they are helping out the economy, and so, by your participation, you are helping the economy.
Without this sort of lock-in price-gouging, the U.S economy could be in real trouble. It could even go into a deep recession.
Re:USB? (Score:3, Funny)
Why couldn't the dumb device emulate a PC and just agree to give the phone what it wants?
You mean have the dumb device emulate a smart device? What a great idea!
Re:USB? (Score:1, Funny)
Conspiracy theory time: who owns the cheapo charger sellers?
If only the EU (Score:3, Funny)
mandated this years ago, we could be using a DB25 connector on our cell phones today!
Re:USB? (Score:1, Funny)
"we can do this the easy way or the hard way, agree a standard among yourselves or we will come up with one that nobody likes and costs too much and ram it down your throat" (like the IEC309 high power connectors--big, clumsy, and cost too much!)
Re:Sounds good to me (Score:1, Funny)
True. You americans should all get given all the lead toys you can eat from china. That way, only the children smart enough to carry around a lead-testing laboratory with them will survive to future generations...