There’s good news if you’re sick of having to look for a proprietary charging cable for your phone, as the European Union officially announced support for harmonizing charger standards around the microUSB format.
According to the EU:
The implementation of the agreement involves the development or the modification of European Standards, which shall ensure compatibility and safe functioning of the new Common EPS’s (External Power Supplies) with the different mobile terminals.
To this aim, the Commission addressed Standardisation Mandate M/455 to the European Standards Organizations, who have accepted it and have identified relevant working items in order to respond to it.
The move will make microUSB the standard for device charging and it aims to eliminate waste, as well as make things easier for consumers. The EU expects inter-chargeable phones to hit the market from now on.
The standardization push is backed by the likes of Apple, Research In Motion, Qualcomm, Sony Ericsson, Texas Instruments, Samsung and others but I wouldn’t get your hopes up that the next iPhone will be microUSB-compatible. First of all, this agreement is for charging only, so the new iPhone could technically have a microUSB option for charging while still requiring the proprietary dock connector for syncing (that still wouldn’t be too bad in my eyes). Additionally, Apple signed on to this in 2009 and we still haven’t seen any movement on this front.
