GSM Association sets 2012 target date for universal cellphone charger
By Donald Melanson 
posted Feb 17th 2009 3:51PM
posted Feb 17th 2009 3:51PM
Well, this is certainly interesting. Just a couple of days after a top European Union commissioner mused about the need for a universal cellphone charger, the GSM Association has now come out and announced that it and 17 of its partner companies are indeed working on such a solution, and that they plan to have a common format in place by 2012. That rather ambitious date will be a bit easier to meet considering the group's choice of connector, micro-USB, which has already gained quite a bit of acceptance as a common format. The use of micro-USB apparently won't be firm requirement by 2012, however, with the GSMA simply saying that the "majority" of new phones sold by then will support what they're describing as the universal charging solution (or UCS), which itself will have to meet a number of strict requirements in order to be broadly compatible. Of course, while everyone including the likes of Nokia, Motorola, LG, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson have signed on with the GSMA, there are a few big names absent, not the least of which, unsurprisingly, is Apple, so there's certainly still quite a ways to go before we have a truly universal standard.[Via BBC News]
This is the best news to come from MWC
(esp since i've seen no real replacement for my N95 from nokia), and can't wait to have universal chargers!!!
I agree with you wholeheartedly, it IS about time these things because one connector for all.
became*
shouldn't write stoned.
How are they going to account for differences in voltage requirements among different phones?
I hear this will apply to CDMA phones as well, however Verizon will have the port disbled so if you want to charge it, all you have to do is sign up for VCharge @ $9.99/mo...
Lets all agree to not buy any phones without a universal connector.
This is good news. It may even mean that even the most pedestrian of phones could include some form of synchronization with one's computer... if only to back up contacts.
@ Spiraling Shape - Resistors in the phones could handle this.
@ Knee to the Groin - That's hilarious! Good one.
Expect Apple to never comply, unless they make the port themselves. Can they be forced to use it?.
apple won't even converge with themselves- look at their new cinema display, which ONLY works with the new macbooks, and not even the mac pro towers!!!
Good one! They don't even support their own charger (I'm talking about ipod Touch 2G).
I think miniUSB is becoming a standard tho, I have several gadgets what I charge with same charger now. No need to reinvent the wheel :)
actually I'm more surprised to see Sony there, if there's a worst proprietary promoting company than Apple, it's Sony. Guess all this red numbers are making them not act as themselves. I still carry an iLink/firewire cable all the time in my pocket trying to find something to plug it to.
They'll come up with a universal-converter in the best hue of white there is, for about $59,99, so be calmed...
Intel (and MS!) developed USB, but it was dying an unused death in the PC world until Apple made it the only port on their iMac, after which it took off. Apple did not invent a new mp3 competitor, they used the already-existing and externally-developed standard of AAC for the iTunes Store. OSX is based on BSD. Safari was based on a fork of KHTML, and Apple then made WebKit an open-source framework that is now being used and developed by companies such as Nokia and Google .
So the idea that Apple snubs standards, or wilfully tries to compete with them, is not really accurate. I know there is a lot of Apple-hate around here, but just because Apple have done things that people do not like, does not mean they are guilty of every crime under the sun.
This announcement has only *just* been made, so give Apple a little time to consider their position, you know? They have not said that they won't be standard by then! It isn't going to happen until 2012 and most importantly, it is not going to be mandatory. So why criticise Apple, for not already being in compliance with a standard that won't be in effect for another 3 years, and that won't be a mandatory standard when it is in effect? It is a bit much.
Huh? USB was a big success starting with 1.1. Apple for a long time preferred Firewire over USB (which was better until USB 2.0) until they USB was so much more popular that they switched preference.
So this is what the Mayans knew...
Apple loves to talk about how environmentally friendly all its products are. Well what now? Apparently being green is less important than losing money on all those dock connector accessories.
Did you ever expect them to act differently? Apple is green so far as it suits them, i.e. to try and sell more unibody macbooks.
Yep. This is typical of Apple and it's pathetic. The EU should make the chargers mandatory.
it'd be the end of the world when everyone comes out with a universal phone adapter... OH WAIT... 2012?? end of the world?? So its TRUEE!!!
I call BS on this... is it seriously gonna take 2 damn years to change the chargers in all the new phones?? booo!!
HTC is missing too!
Unless Im mistaken, every single HTC phone I've either seen or owned going back to 3 years ago has come equipped with mini-USB as its default charging port.
...in other words, I can't imagine HTC being hesitant to change over to micro-USB when they are already putting mini-USB in all of their devices.
You'd be surprised.
The HTC connector is "compatible with" Mini-USB plugs but adds signals for audio and other stuff. It's not Mini-USB.
MicroUSB doesn't really have the space for them to add those, so they wouldn't be able to force you to use their stupid adapters and cables and might have to *gasp* add a sodding 3.5mm audio jack!!!!!
For some reason the obvious logic of doing this seems to have passed them by.
Fnuky,
No, it's still mini-USB, just because they have enabled the 4th pin to accept additional signals does not preclude it from being identified as mini-USB.
http://www.answers.com/Mini-USB.?nafid=3#Mini.2C_Micro
HTC don't use Mini-USB - they use "ExtUSB", a standard developed by them.
That has six extra signals on the opposite side of the 4 normal USB ones
http://wiki.xda-developers.com/index.php?pagename=ExtUSB
Just in time for the new world order one world government.
Interesting that everyone is crapping on apple.
yes, they don't use mini or micro usb.
however! they use the dock connector on pretty much everything they make going all the way back to the first ipods. nearly any accessory you already had will work with your new ipod.
now go into best buy and look for a charger for an LG phone. there's a dozen different connectors for that ONE BRAND of phone.
Motorola has a minimum of 3 connectors on the market RIGHT NOW.
No, your dock will play audio out. It might not charge, and probably won't output video. Since Apple revises iPods every 9 months or so, and it takes almost that long in leadtime for most companies to get new products like boombxes and such into stores. Found that out when I got my iPod Touch 2G, and spent a couple months looking for things it would actually fully work with before giving up.
When my buddy plugged in my old Belkin iPod car adapter into his iPhone it said "unrecognized device" and wouldn't even charge it.
a small nit, the dock connector appeared on ipod 3rd gen.
before that was 6pin firewire
Agreed. Motorola and Apple are crap. What's your point?
Another small nitpick - The iPod dock has gone through numerous revisions through the generations leaving older cables incapable of charging newer ones. the only thing worse then having 5 different shaped charging cables is having 5 charging cables that are the exact same shape but still not compatible with one another.
I dunno, I've had the same audio devices and chargers for my last 5 ipods or so, including a classic, nano, touch, etc.
Certainly there are some combination that don't work, but I've yet to have anything I'd consider a problem, including with $1 eBay crap car chargers etc on the touch.
Only thing that was annoying is that I couldn't use a USB dock connector to charge my older Firewire dock iPod.
The dock connector has remained with a standard pin-out since it was introduced. Recently when support for charging over the firewire pins people thought the connector itself had changed. Thats not the case, the devices just removed the ability to charge from those pin. A lot of previous chargers used those pins to charge the devices. As far as I know, the pins themselves have not changed at all, just what the device supports on what pins. Now, the Firewire pins may have been abandoned for future use later, but who knows.
huzzah! a standard that's actually standard.
Wireless charging! THAT is the future of electronics!
These are not "universal battery chargers" but simply AC/DC converters with universal plug. The manufacturers would like to make it sound more complicated than it really is.This should have been easy to change eons ago, but obviously money making takes priority over convenience.
Wow, 2012 to include a micro-usb port. Don't stress yourselves guys.
Some manufacturers embrace USB ports for both datalink and charging and headset applications. If the rest did the same it wouldn't be a problem... The once lagging behind is Apple, Sony Ericsson and Nokia...
Much of the mobile phone business model revolves around accessories. I have always had to purchase an additional wall charger and car charger for every cell phone I have purchased. With consumers only needing to buy one set of cables for all their phones I wonder how this will affect the major carriers as they usually sell those accesories.
definitely. if you can sell a charger at the store for $30 that you can get on eBay 2 for $3, that's a nice profit margin.
when I was working retail in the cellular market, we'd discount accessories 50% at the drop of a hat, you just had to ask. we still made a killing at that price.
Apple will only comply if their power charger/sync cable is the universal one and then they will just sue everyone because they have a patent for it.
Test comment.
Ambitious? Really?! How hard would it to be to make this by next year (so all phones release in Feb '10 or later have a microUSB port used to power the device). I really don't think it is that complicated.
Some phones are probably already too far down the development path to have to atop and spend some cash on re-engineering? Just a guess though.
i think its more likely the reps for all the different companies are all assholes and dont want to come to a proper agreement
Absolutely, Ten. It will be a cold day in hell when Apple puts a microUSB port on the iPhone.
I find this pretty useless. I can plug my iPhone cable into any USB port, that's good enough, really. There are so many benefits, it's hard to count them all.
I recently charged my iPhone on a plane using my MacBook Pro's battery.
I always liked Nokia for sticking with the same charger for all their models of phones, but the USB/iPhone/iPod solution is even better.
BTW if they make Apple comply with this standard the solution will be to use the current iPod connectors, but add an adapter-plug for the universal adapter. Nothing would be gained since that's basically what we already have.
This press release is crap. The target is actually much more agressive than that!
bloody comments system... that comments was aimed at Chris.
You're right. The adapter, in this case, will happen to just be a normal iPod USB cable. The GSMA UCS spec says that the charger must have a USB type A port on it and the phone should have Micro-USB, but everybody must comply with the USB type A part so Apple's OK.
@Fnuky thanks for clearing that up.
[It's somewhat beyond me how a huge site like Engadget can have a comment system that really doesn't work _at all_. WTF?]
I hope it's the "Stone" for the Pre.
Stone ftw!
You won't see Apple comply with this. They have such a huge base invested in the Dock connector. At this point, what would be gained by adopting a universal standard would alienate the "Universal Standard" within Apples mobile product line. With docks and such, I think it would be smart of Apple to stick with what they have now. However, I think including an alternate "Universal" jack or an adapter would be appreciated. The accessory market for the iPod/iPhone market is huge, I don't want to say larger than a would be "universal standard" accessory market. But just about everybody has an iPod cord laying around. I have never had a problem charging my phone anywhere I go.
As Fnuky has pointed out above, Apple is already complying with the proposed standard. So speculating on whether / when Apple will sign is kinda pointless.
Well they're partly complying with it :o)
Their charger will be fully compliant, it's just that their handset won't so you'll need the Apple cable not a standard MicroUSB.
Since the aim was to stop having to manufacture and dispose of billions of chargers per year, they still meet that goal.
If there's a universal charging port, will that port be able to be use as for audio out , and TV out and data port?
I do not want to have 4 holes in the phone.....
It's a good question. Naturally Micro-USB's data and power-compatible.
There are standards for plugging in headsets over Micro USB and also they're working on TV out over it too, but I suspect people will prefer to keep their 3.5mm headphones and manufacturers will standardise on Mini-HDMI for TV out.
Agreed on charge is needed. I don't expect Apple to comply since they make a profit from peripherals.
I meant charger not 'charge.'
It wasn't so long ago that people predicted we'd be flying to other planets daily in 2000, and have weightlessness and beam transporters, that all didn't quite pan out but perhaps in another few decades we'll have unified chargers, (-voice of dr zoidberg:) hooray!
I get it now; the world is going to end in 2012 because the advent of universal a universal charger allows the robots to finally unite in uprising against humanity. A LOT of people have a cell phone...
They should make all cells comply with apple/iPod proprietary 30 pin charger. Just think about it that same single jack carries DC / 5.1 surround audio/ video. We all all know iPod wire dominates on a global level since 2002!!!!!!!!!!
This sucks, so means they will change iPhone 30 pin connector which has been same since 2002!!!!!what the???