Nokia, Apple, RIM and others agree on micro-USB phone charger standard for Europe
By Thomas Ricker 
posted June 29th 2009 8:15AM
posted June 29th 2009 8:15AM
While the free-market works pretty well when, uh, left alone to be free, sometimes it needs a push from a visible hand. Case in point, phone chargers; at the moment some 30 different types of chargers are used with handsets throughout Europe. Today, the European Commission received industry backing of its phone charger standard that relies on a micro-USB socket. The standard is now backed by all the majors (representing 90% of the European mobile market) including Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Apple, LG, NEC, Qualcomm, Research in Motion, Samsung and Texas Instruments with compatible devices starting to appear in Europe next year. Or course, the micro-USB charger standard already has the blessings of CTIA, OMTP, and GSM Association which implies a broader adoption beyond Europe, someday. One charger for any mobile phone... where's the catch?
HTC uses the Mini-USB standard, so why would they need to adopt the Micro-USB standard. They picked a seemingly universal adapter and stuck with it.
"While the free-market works pretty well when, uh, left alone to be free..."
Where have you been these last few months?! When the free-market is left alone to be free, you get a giant pyramid scheme, and when it crashes, the taxpayer has to bail out all the greedy and rapacious private financial institutions and the whole world dives into a recession.
Man...
where have you been the last 100 years... we haven't had a truly free market in the US for quite some time. they government has been meddling in the market quite regularly.
You don't need to bail them out if you leave it to be free, the companies die and get replaced and the economy recovers naturally, the way Jeebus intended.
Wasn't Apple the first mainstream computer manufacturer to use USB for their keyboards and mice? It wasn't the standard solution of the time, nor was Firewire, SCCI, or DVI. Apple's non-standards are not all propriety standards, sometimes they are just ahead of the curve.
That said, I can't image Apple eliminating their dock connector. If they put USB on a device, it will only be for charging and not data transfer. Expect a silly adaptor...
I have a Palm Pre, a Plantronics Bluetooth headset and my wife has some LG phone. They all use micro-USB and it's so nice to only need 1 charger if we go on trips and such.
How's the Palm Pre? My AT&T contract ends July of next year so it's going to cost me around $100 to cancel my contract I think. Is it worth for the Pre or should I just wait it out till my contract is over next year? Thanks!
@mgsrocks1:
I absolutely love the Palm Pre. Personally I like it better than the iPhone but that's just preference. I'm a sucker for physical buttons and the full touch screen experience annoys me after a while. I feel like I have more control over the device with the Palm Pre with all of the keyboard shortcuts and alternate ways of input. But that's just my preference. Yours may be different. Luckily Sprint offers a 30 day no risk free trial.
I wouldn't necessarily cancel your AT&T contract for it though unless you are specifically looking to get a new phone right away. The Palm Pre is an amazing phone, don't get me wrong, but it (and/or other new WebOS devices) should be coming out on other carriers soon (6 months or so).
That being said, you may want to look at the differences in price between AT&T and Sprint. We are saving almost $1000 over 2 years by switching to Sprint. Assuming such a savings would apply to you, if Sprint is decent in your area, I would highly recommend canceling your contract for the Palm Pre and Sprint.
I think we'll see the dock connector replaced with a micro-USB port on the next iPhone (probably iPods too, including the Shuffle).
You'll be able to buy a micro-USB to dock connector adapter so you can use your old dock connector accessories with the new micro USB enabled devices.
The good thing about this is that all the iPod accessory makers will change their devices to use micro-USB to support the new iPhone/iPods, but this also means they should support all these other devices from Nokia, Sony Ericsson, RIM too.
Except that that 30-pin dock connector includes USB functionality PLUS lots more pins for other purposes, which means there are only two possibilities. 1) If you have an accessory that is designed to use a dock connector and you have an iPod/iPhone that only has mini-USB, that accessory may not work because it won't have access to the rest of the pins due to the fact that the signals on the non-USB pins would be dropped by the adapter. Or 2) If your accessory actually used micro-USB and you had an adapter to connect it to the iPod/iPhone's dock port, you'd only be using a percentage of the available dock pins and the functionality offered by the other pins wouldn't be usable through the adapter. This would be fine because the iPod/iPhone would retain its dock connector for compatibility, and as long as your accessory only needed micro-USB, you'd be good. But some accessories require more than the USB pins.
Keeping the dock connector for its full functionality and providing a dock connector to USB adapter makes more sense in terms of keeping the accessory ecosystem happy and allowing more functionality.
John, what do those other pins do, anyway?
With a MicroUSB to Female A adapter I can turn my Nokia N810's USB port into a full fledged host port, which can thus do whatever I need it to do (albeit without much power). Does the iPod's fancy dock connector provide a boatload of extra power or something?
here's the catch...each charger will cost $400 so that all the companies can get their share of profit pie
If it becomes a standard the chinese will make it for $2 so i wouldn't worry about that.
That's exactly what I was thinking. Phones won't come with chargers anymore and the chargers will be tres (EU speak for very) expensive.
Wish Apple would have done that with the 3Gs ¬_¬
i think Apple will go with a micro-usb to dock connector adapter, instead. There are 30 pins in the dock connector for power, data sync, audio in, audio out, SD video out, HD video out, and peripheral interactivity. micro usb has only 4 pins, so all the functionality would be lost, not to mention all the car kits, alarm clocks, stereo docks, boom boxes, and more that have the dock connector in them.
They will each require use of a different cable to sync with the computer
I think this is a great win for consumers at every level. Although, I thought this is just and understanding amongst the involved companies. There is nothing in writing about an official agreement.
...and voltage?
USB is always 5 volts.
And please don't buy into the crap of $60 ipod/universalchargers with USB connectors, 500mA of 5v should not cost you a lot.
The iPhone one is 5v 1A, charges much faster than connecting to a computer.
Instead of changing the connector on the device, why don't they standardize the connector on the charger? Make the charger have a USB connector then I can use whatever USB cable I want and whatever charger I want for ANY device that charges over USB. Standardizing the connector on the phone is of little help to consumers as most consumers only have one phone. So now they can use ANY charger on their ONE phone, big deal! I'd rather use one charger for ALL my electronic devices, not just phones. As for the micro connector, I've got micro-USB connectors on my Kindle and my Mophie Juice Pack air for my phone. So far my initial impression is the connector sucks. In a poorly lit room its very difficult to tell which way is up on the connector so invariably I try to plug it in upside down. Mini-USB much nicer. On the plus side I look forward to all the new cable options that the market will provide......finding a Micro-USB cable under 6ft in a brick and mortar store is impossible at the moment.
they are standardized. it's called USB-A. That's the connector that is on the end of any cable that plugs into your computer. Apple and Amazon's Kindle already ship with the setup you describe, and I love it. A tiny, 1 inch cube plugs into the wall and has one USB port on it putting out standard 5V USB power. I can plug any device that charges over USB into any wall wart. Now, that's a standard.
Next stop, (micro)SD for all?
Sure, if you give 51% of the SD license ownership to sony corporation first.
i never understood half of the proprietary connectors anyway. they're LARGER than microUSB, officially offering NO benefit to the consumer or the corporation.
For licensing, I think what will happen is the phone consortium will switch all of their phones to a very specific amp rating, and make it so pre-agreement microUSB chargers [USB cables will still necessarily all work, i hope] won't charge the device, but any and all post-agreement, licensed chargers will charge all of the consortium devices. so if you own a post-agreement iPhone and Curve, the chargers will be interchangeable. But a post-agreement Curve won't work with a pre-agreement one. or something
On the news they showed a regular size USB plug in the bit about it, sigh, the news, isn't it worth every second you watch it?
I trust this sucker won't require change with USB 3.0, at the minimum.
Instead of this, how about a standard USB jack on all electrical outlet and cars? That means we can use our existing USB cables on existing devices without buying adapters or whatnot.
Sooo... I own a mac, and two iPhones... I have wanted Apple to go to mini/micro USB standard ever since, but... Apple is going to change the charger / sync connection from proprietary to universal micro-usb... HA! I will believe it when I see it... Those guys don't have a universal bone in their body! Socialist control freak pigs that they are, we must all conform to their way for the greater good of all technology.
I think it will be a dock connector adapter with pass-through port and micro USB on the side but the adapter will snap on like an accessory so that when you are home it sync with dock connector and traveling it will charge via micro USB never having to remove anything
Next up, Monster USB charger cables; $50 a foot. "Thanks to polished platinum tips and real rubber, this cable transfers 5,000,000 microvolts with three times less warmup than the competition. Data transfer speeds over 800MB/s! (Fine print: data transfer speeds are always limited by capability of attached devices)."
Great news, too bad HTC isn't on that list
For the iPhone debate: What if apple build in an additional connector?
The dock connector could be for docks and accesories and the microUSB one could be just for charging?
Or just an adapter.
Great! my Nokia 6500 classic already have the mcro USB. i like it.
As previously commented, the hardware plug may be the same, but the specific voltage range can be booby-trapped to a single vendor. Go google "Creative USB charger" for more info.