On February 17, 2009 the GSMA issued a press release announcing that “17 leading mobile operators and manufacturers” agreed to standardize the interface to charge the devices they’d sell in the future to microUSB by the year 2012. Now I’ve been a Nokia man my whole life, until February of this year that is when I purchased a Google Nexus One, but before I switched to Android I had a Nokia charger, and so did all my other friends.
If you’re thinking Finland is “Nokia-land”, and that those who don’t support Nokia get rocks thrown at them while old ladies scream obscenities, then you’re right. If you’re visiting a friend’s flat, hell even if you’re at a bar or a night club, chances are you can find a charger for topping up your mobile device. The same can’t be said about Sony Ericsson, Motorola, LG, Samsung, and other mobile phone manufactures, which meant that if you ever switch vendors, you’d suddenly have a stash of mobile phone chargers that were useless. You’d also have to carry your charger around everywhere you went, because no one could give you some juice.
More worrisome is that in rich western countries, places where people buy a new mobile phone every 12 to 18 months, people accumulate a bunch of chargers that they’ll probably never use. When I left Finland for 45 days, and thought I wasn’t going to come back, I gathered up all the technology in my apartment and noticed that I had at least 5 Nokia chargers with me, all with an EU plug, therefore all useless to me where I was going. I handed them out like candy to my friends, but it got me thinking, why can’t phones be sold without chargers?
Rubber isn’t cheap to produce, copper is expensive as it becomes more and more precious, and the amount of fuel used to ship a charger from China to some warehouse in Germany, before finally reaching my closest retail store in Finland, is absolutely ridiculous. By 2012, when all mobile phones use microUSB, I hope mobile phones start shipping without chargers, and I really hope phone manufactures stop including those abysmal headphones that are often bundled.
Anyway, hippie bullshit aside, about 3 weeks ago I found myself back in Finland with a Nexus One, two laptops, and only one USA to EU power converter. Now I love my mobile phone, but if you made me choose between my laptop, which rarely leaves my flat, and the ability to text and call from anywhere in the world, I’d take my laptop any day of the week. The laptop won exclusive rights to the power converter, so I was tasked with a mission to find a charger!
I didn’t even bother looking for HTC chargers, first thing I did was buy a Nokia charger, the AC-10E. It’s Nokia’s only microUSB charger you can buy in Finland, and I think the only one the company makes. It’s big, it’s bulky, but hey, it charged my Google Nexus One without any issues. Why would there be any issues, a standard is a standard, right?
Fast forward to a few days ago, and I’m browsing around Verkkokauppa, Finland’s largest chain of electronic stores, on a boring Saturday afternoon. I stumble across the TinyPlug MicroUSB” charger and knew I had to have it. It’s smaller, much smaller, than the official Nokia charger, and for a guy like me who’s on an airplane at least once every 3 months, reducing weight and volume is critical. It’s also convenient to have one charger in the bedroom and one in the kitchen/living room.
Since it’s microUSB it just works, it also appears to be charging my Nexus One at the same speed as my Nokia charger, and according to the online product page it has an idle power draw of 0.3 watts. Using the image below, a photo I took of the back of the packaging that housed my Nokia AC-10E, the TinyPlug has a 2 star power efficiency rating while the Nokia has a 5 star. If I was really green I’d care about that, but the fact that I no longer have a car, and have dramatically cut down on my consumption of meat since it’s crazy expensive in this country, I’ll forget about such small things as star ratings.
The best part about the charger is the price. While the Nokia AC-10E cost me 20 EUR, the TinyPlug was only 9.90 EUR! If you’re in Finland, and have a new mobile phone, I’d highly recommend you pick one up. Assuming you’re in another country, then you’ll probably see the TinyPlug in shop near you at some point, most likely under a different brand.
This product was obviously made by some no name Chinese manufacturer, and I’m alright with that. Thank you GSMA.
Update: IntoMobile reader “Snidely” asked a very good question about what input voltages this charger takes. Attached below are two photos, one of the Nokia charger’s output, the other of the TinyPlug charger. Nokia’s charger spits out more power, so theoretically it should charge my device faster. Both take a wide range of voltages, so I’m not worried about frying my Nexus One.
