Fight the cable clutter.

Whether cell phone, MP3 player, camera - each device needs its own charger, plug its own, its own battery. However, now takes EU Commissioner Verheugen chaos in standards and threatened with mandatory standards. A super idea, just years too late.

 

"Has someone a BlackBerry cable?"

"We need urgently the sixth floor of a Nokia charger!"

"Can I use your iPhone times have cable?"

One of these cries for help I hear every week in the office. Someone always needs a charger for just leergesogene Nokia phone, the Sony camera or another device that is supplied with a charger, which is so ugly is that the existence of this lump of plastic with the leash on love again forgets.

Of course, the deenergised colleagues are very, very rare someone help out. Indeed, hardly a power adapter fits into another device. Many mobile phones are not even fit the power adapter of a model in another device the same brand. Because this is so, my closet is on a plastic bag full of supplies that I over the years have accumulated. No idea where the come, but someday they will be used again.

The annoying power supply mess now have time for the Mobile World Congress PR adviser to EU Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen discovered. Verheugen calls from the handset manufacturers a standard for power supplies. The
Deutsche Welle Verheugen said: "My patience with the industry is now coming to an end, and if the industry is not soon with a solution for Chargers uniform, then we will force the industry."

Verheugen comes seven years too late

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That sounds very powerful and determined, Commissioner Verheugen only comes with this claim about seven years too late. Because the Chargers problem is done now so slow by itself for new phones more and more manufacturers use a mini-USB connector as a connector for the power adapter. Bernd Theiss, technology chief at the trade magazine "connect", believes: "The diversity is already and will in future continue to shrink."

The smartphone manufacturer HTC, for example, which includes the Google G1 mobile phone manufactures, has made all 20 currently available models in Europe, a mini-USB port to plug the power supply and for connection to computer. RIM makes it to the BlackBerry as well. One drawback is the mini-USB connector, however: On the device side of the connector is not standardized. This means that you have probably the power supply a phone for another device can use - but is guaranteed not.

The maze is shrinking

And so it also uses, for example, HTC's mini-USB connectors for additional functions such as audio or video-out, the only one with HTC's own cables can be used. Thus, if a standard is missing: The plugs have the same form at best, a few contacts but manufacturers can prove their own taste. HTC's regional manager Lars-Christian Weiss explains blogs ONLINE cheek also, his company was "not aware of standardization efforts." Sony Ericsson will continue on a separate charger input, but installed at least since 2005 for all mobile phone models, the same connection.

Company spokeswoman Susanne Burgdorf said the ignorance of Mini USB so: "The place which the connection is required to be loading faster if possible minimized. Each manufacturer has its own, for optimal solution and its production lines geared. The demand of customers is more like design, hardware and software, so this is also the focus of development. "

A little chaos remains

In plain English this means: Most of today's mobile telephones in use in Germany have a personal connection for the power adapter, the most likely not otherwise fit. Newer devices are often mini-USB ports, but not always. And even these mini-USB jack for some details may differ.

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Therefore, Verheugen's tirade against the producers entitled. Only the timing is a little surprised. Already in 2002, for example, the Consumer Council at the German Institute for Standardization standard for interfaces of battery chargers, power supplies and battery-operated devices everyday proposed.

Because the producers did not participate, the proposal was not a standard. 2007, then in one of the European Commission commissioned a study for preparing the Ecodesign Directive Experts on Standardization of interfaces is recommended to Ökoprofil external power supplies to improve. A couple of tensions with its own standard connector variants, but this is feasible - that the tenor of
scientific study ( "Lot 7: External power supplies and battery chargers).

Manufacturers are unrepentant

The EU Commissioner Verheugen now, towards the end of the current service of the Commission, where gradually a solution of the problem emerges, the power adapter clutter noticed, you can probably dismiss as a publicity: Some Commissioner tried to - perhaps the successor career already in mind -- through a popular theme from his Commission to adopt service.

But apart from this criticism of the producers entitled. It is now really do not understand when Tony Graziano, Director of the Association of European information and telecommunication industry, the public now says: "It is very unlikely that we have a charger for all phones will evolve. These are the voltage requirements and the batteries differently. "

This line of reasoning that is the reason for a lack of standard a missing standard. Because the cell phone batteries are made of a single reason so different:
The manufacturers have never agreed to a standard.

That each mobile phone model its own battery-type and perhaps even its own power supply needs is not to explain technical requirements. Thomas Kuthe by specialist magazine "Elektronik Praxis" commented the following way: "The fact that manufacturers of mobile phone models with the same voltage and power adapters offer different, I can not quite understand. Perhaps because the designers have a little too much with reingeredet?" Perhaps managers of accessories department, the transaction is afraid - who knows?

If the EU Commission, manufacturers could now urge, the mini-USB jacks to a mandatory standard to make, that would be ideal. Many experts judge as Ralf Higgelke Fachdienst of "Design & Elektronik:" For as handheld cell phone, MP3 player or digital camera, there is no technical reason not to switch to USB. "

However, before a standard for USB power comes, a new technique sabotage the project: the beginning of the year, on the
CES in Las Vegas, Palm, and two groups of firms charging stations for wireless phones shown. Currently, there is a new standard for these three standards. Who's surprised.

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