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EU plans to force OEMs to use a common charger for all phones

xda-developers.com

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Re: EU plans to force OEMs to use a common charger for all phones

#141

Post by lifeisstillgood »

xorcist wrote: post #93
sph wrote: post #4

Good, though in practice it's not the charger the problem, I use the same USB plug everywhere, it's Apple and their cable. Right now I always need with me a micro USB cable, an USB-C one, and Lightning, because Apple thinks different™. What's Apple reasoning for not abandoning Lightning for USB-C on their phones?

> I use the same USB plug everywhere, That's because of EU regulation. All the big manufacturers had their own connector before that, micro-USB started to look like a common connector among the low end manufacturers. This is the next step for that regulation and has been in the cards for some time.

>>> That's because of EU regulation.

I am interested in that (because the "secret history" of many market driven change often ends up being a regulator in one influential area made a good decision - the usual example being California and car pollution standards)

Edit: just to say I am not commenting either way on the EU here, or on regulators in general. I am just interested if there was a clear point in USB standards process that EU intervention made a difference.

If so it would be useful to know their track record in this when judging this situation.

Re: EU plans to force OEMs to use a common charger for all phones

#142

Post by foepys »

jsudi wrote: post #139
cute_boi wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but without writing in law apple will never care about environment right? They are getting money from each connector so why would they? Is it possible to solve such issue without law? What solution do you propose? If you have solution let us know?

If citizens care about the environment they will stop buying Apple products. They don’t, hence they don’t care about the environment. Why make laws that go against the citizen wishes?

The same reason why there are regulations about pollution in general.

Re: EU plans to force OEMs to use a common charger for all phones

#143

Post by mrsuprawsm »

ThatPlayer wrote: post #130
josefx wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Good, though in practice it's not the charger the problem, I use the same USB plug everywhere This isn't the first time the EU mentioned those plans, the current situation is basically the phone manufacturers regulating themselves to avoid an explicit regulation by the EU. > it's Apple and their cable. Of course there is always that one greedy asshole ruining it for everyone else. > What's Apple reasoning for not a…

If Lightning was superior, the new iPad Mini and new (and previous) iPad Pros wouldn't be using USB-C rather than Lightning.

I think that the idea of the USB-C port on the iPads is to connect external devices. These are more likely to have a USB-C something (e.g. USB-C -> USB-[micro|C|A]) cable that people already have lying around, as opposed to lightning -> something cable.

Re: EU plans to force OEMs to use a common charger for all phones

#144

Post by baybal2 »

sph wrote: post #4

Good, though in practice it's not the charger the problem, I use the same USB plug everywhere, it's Apple and their cable. Right now I always need with me a micro USB cable, an USB-C one, and Lightning, because Apple thinks different™. What's Apple reasoning for not abandoning Lightning for USB-C on their phones?

> What's Apple reasoning for not abandoning Lightning for USB-C on their phones?

It's the $25 lightning cable, which is literally engineered to break.

Re: EU plans to force OEMs to use a common charger for all phones

#145

Post by InsomniacL »

iSnow wrote: post #43
amelius wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Probably they think they can make the jump to a completely wireless phone before any USB-C mandates come in. What is the efficiency of wireless charging?

Not great, but better than I personally expected: "Inductive charging is not as efficient as direct charging [...] An analysis of energy use found that charging a Pixel 4 from 0 to 100 percent on a classic cable used 14.26 Wh (watt-hours), while doing so with a wireless charger took 21.01 Wh, a 47 percent increase. " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_charging Of course problems like heating up the battery and t…

"900 million active iphones in use" - CFO Luca Maestri

14.26 Wh * 900000000 * 365 (days) = 4684 GWh/yr

46% = 2154 GWh/yr wasted energy

That's about the total energy output of Madagascar with a population of 27 million people.

There's a lot of reasons why the above numbers are wrong but I just wanted to highlight that at current efficiency, there would be a lot of wasted energy. :)

Re: EU plans to force OEMs to use a common charger for all phones

#146

Post by madeofpalk »

maeln wrote: post #44
sph wrote: post #4

Good, though in practice it's not the charger the problem, I use the same USB plug everywhere, it's Apple and their cable. Right now I always need with me a micro USB cable, an USB-C one, and Lightning, because Apple thinks different™. What's Apple reasoning for not abandoning Lightning for USB-C on their phones?

> What's Apple reasoning for not abandoning Lightning for USB-C on their phones? I can think of 3 reasons: 1. A lightning port is slightly smaller than USB-c, so it enable Apple to keep their phone slimmer than the competition in theory. 2. Apple loves to be in control of everything. With lightning, they could make a switch to a "lightning 2.O" cable / port whenever they so pleased. With USB-C they would be restricte…

> With USB-C they would be restricted by the USB-IF.

Apple will still find a way to do what they want, especially given they play a non-trivial role in the USB-IF and provided significant resources towards developing USB-C in the first place.

I would like USB-C on my iPhone, but I think the biggest reason why Apple hasn't done it is just because of momentum, and that it _is_ a switch from the current situation.

Re: EU plans to force OEMs to use a common charger for all phones

#147

Post by foxfluff »

I feel like there's bigger fish to fry. There's more and more li-ion appliances and tools, most with proprietary chargers (think all the power tools), and in many cases no user replaceable battery packs (e.g. vacuum cleaners).

It really sucks that I need a new charger + battery if I want to use some bosch or dewalt tool instead of a ryobi or whatever I happen to have. And I can't use these tools' batteries to power USB devices..

I'm sure all these electric vacuum cleaners are a big lump of e-waste when the battery inevitably dies.

Phones have standardized pretty well. Apple is an outlier but I don't think that's a huge deal, and the cost of forcing them (and their users) to switch may be worse than the status quo.

Re: EU plans to force OEMs to use a common charger for all phones

#148

Post by tinus_hn »

sph wrote: post #4

Good, though in practice it's not the charger the problem, I use the same USB plug everywhere, it's Apple and their cable. Right now I always need with me a micro USB cable, an USB-C one, and Lightning, because Apple thinks different™. What's Apple reasoning for not abandoning Lightning for USB-C on their phones?

I think they made commitments to manufacturers to keep Lightning around for a certain period. Regardless of standardization Lightning is already showing its age, it’s limiting charging and sync speeds.

Re: EU plans to force OEMs to use a common charger for all phones

#149

Post by fundatus »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #141
xorcist wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I use the same USB plug everywhere, That's because of EU regulation. All the big manufacturers had their own connector before that, micro-USB started to look like a common connector among the low end manufacturers. This is the next step for that regulation and has been in the cards for some time.

>>> That's because of EU regulation. I am interested in that (because the "secret history" of many market driven change often ends up being a regulator in one influential area made a good decision - the usual example being California and car pollution standards) Edit: just to say I am not commenting either way on the EU here, or on regulators in general. I am just interested if there was a clear point in USB standard…

EU basically said to manufacturers: Find a common ground for charging cables / chargers, otherwise we will simply regulate it. So all manufacturers apart from Apple agreed to use microUSB (at the time). Apple was still part of this, but decided to simply provide an adapter to microUSB.

Re: EU plans to force OEMs to use a common charger for all phones

#150

Post by msh »

sph wrote: post #4

Good, though in practice it's not the charger the problem, I use the same USB plug everywhere, it's Apple and their cable. Right now I always need with me a micro USB cable, an USB-C one, and Lightning, because Apple thinks different™. What's Apple reasoning for not abandoning Lightning for USB-C on their phones?

Their existing customers will be super pissed having to change all their cables and docks, just like they where when apple went from 30 pin to Lightning.
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