EU Commissioner Wants Standard For Mobile Phone Connectors

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."

They need to do this for auto components

[Maxo-Texas]

There is no reason there are more than 5 or 6 models of A/C units, alternators, etc.

There should be a standard light duty, medium duty, heavy duty model and standard connection brackets.

Conflicted goals?

[macraig]

I don't get it... how can the same commission that calls for doubling copyright to a ridiculous 95 years also recommend a good-for-the-rest-of-us standard like this? It seems like this commission has some rather conflicted or confused goals and motivations.

Guenter is an attention whore

[Kabada]

As spiegel.de, where I first read about Guenter Verheugens plans, says: "It's a nice idea, but 7 years too late, and your doing it for publicity only!" This commissions' term is nearly over (or at least close enough to being over for this plan to not have a rat's asses chance of being implemented while Guenter is still in office). Thus I can only agree with spiegel's assessment: Verheugen wants to go out with something attentiongrabbing (hereby accomplished) and those plans will be put back into a drawer once he leaves office.

Re:USB?

[Obfuscant]

c) Have some sort of method to signify the presence of a "dumb charger" to the device. THIS IS NOT COVERED BY ANY CURRENT USB SPECIFICATION. As a result it is at best covered by "de facto" standards.

Here's a pretty reasonable "de-facto" standard that says you are talking to a "dumb charger": if there is no data on the data wires and nothing connected to them at the other end, you're talking to a dumb "power only" supply.

Manufacturers could easily adopt this outside the USB spec, since there is nothing preventing them from doing so. They must follow the spec when attached to a real USB source, but if there are no termination resistors on the data lines at the other end, then they aren't talking to a USB source and can do what they want.

In fact, there is already a (pseudo?) standard for how to connect earphones/handsfree hardware using the same mini-USB connection, apparently based on the ability to detect the difference between handsfree hardware and a true USB source.

Most of the devices I now have have mini-USB for charging and communication. The Sansa MP3 player I have has some oddball connector, so it's the odd man out.

BUT, the Sony PRS-505 I have, even though it has a mini-USB connection for data, is, IMNSHO, broken because it will only charge via that connection IF is it connected directly to a primary USB host adapter and can enumerate itself on the bus. No hubs. No "dumb power supplies". Even if the hub is externally powered -- no charge! It will actually DISCHARGE the device completely in such a situation, because it will stay powered on attempting to communicate with the USB host while it is not charging from the USB connection, even if there is no USB host to talk to.

So, count me in the camp that considers mini-USB to be the defacto standard for connecting anything to anything, and that manufacturers that require proprietary cables for simple things should buy a clue.

Re:USB?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, there is a specification from the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) for battery charging at up to 1.5A. You can download the specification [usb.org] ('Battery Charging Spec v1.0 Spec and Battery Charging Adopters Agreement') from their website [usb.org].

You're right that USB charging is pretty badly standardized at the moment though. For instance, neither my iPhone nor my Garmin Nuvi will charge without their special cables with magic resistances. I used to be able to charge an iPod off a USB cable I soldered onto a 5V supply, but not so with the iPhone.

Re:USB?

[Ilgaz]

Nokia always used 2 standards before totally moving to USB on new models. Why 2? Because the older one was too big for new fashion small phones so they used 1 smaller form factor. On the other hand, besides their greedy charger prices, Nokia always used a very standard charger compared to others. It is just 3.7 Volt which seems similar to battery voltage.

See Samsung and Sony older models about the real evil stuff especially Samsung. At least Sony had decency to keep one charger format.

I think they already stabilized on USB except Apple but Apple has a very nice excuse as iPod connector is open and really popular and USB based anyway.

Re:USB?

[Ilgaz]

Do you have clue about how many iPods exist on planet? Nearing what? Hundreds of millions? Why should they use plain USB when they have a device combining an ipod and some kind of smart phone? If they came up with plain USB connector or some kind of iPhone connector, that would be really evil considering amount of iPod connector enabled devices (even cars!) people already have.

I think the spec is open anyway.