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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

#221

Post by throw0101a »

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?

The original iPod (remember those?) 30-pint connector was around for eleven years, 2003-2014:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dock_connector#Mobile_devices

Lightning has been around for "only" nine as of 2021, having ben released in 2012:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_(connector)

An article from 2012:

> As for Lightning's expected lifespan, the format is estimated to be in use for the next five to ten years, almost identical to the now-defunct 30-pin standard.

* https://appleinsider.com/articles/12/09/21/analyst_lightning...

Yes, it's nice that we finally have a supposedly universal plug, but we only recently got here. It may be that they simply don't think it's worth it yet to 'force' people to switch infrastructure yet. That the USB-C ecosystem is universal enough (though I'm sure them switching would push it forward).

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

#222

Post by throw0101a »

maccard wrote: post #207
zatarc wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany: hold my beer! 1.78€ or $2.09 But thats not point here. Everyone is talking about the climate change and then we want to charge millions or billions of phones with ~50% extra power? Good idea!

In absolute terms it's nothing though. An average household uses 4000 kWh of electricity in the UK (less than half of the average us household), so saving the 5kWh on 4 phones is a 0.5% saving, which is roughly equivalent to running your home boiler for 10 minutes per year. Turning off your thermostat for one evening would have the equivalent impact of not using a wireless charger for a century.

> In absolute terms it's nothing though.

Symbols can hold power though.

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

#223

Post by kalleboo »

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…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_external_power_supply

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

#224

Post by cube00 »

mclightning wrote: post #197
enlyth wrote: post #45

Maybe unpopular opinion but I like lightning more than USB-C, it makes more sense to me to have the connective parts of the cable on the outside of it, which gets rid of that little "notch" on the inside of USB-C ports which just seems like it can get bent at any time.

I'm sure mechanical engineers calculated the entry, insertion distance and wiggle room, so that you can't apply any relevant force onto the notch inside.

Wish they had done the same with Micro-USB, those get real flaky after a while.

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

#225

Post by saddlerustle »

InsomniacL wrote: post #145
iSnow wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. :)

Thats about the energy demand of a single small aluminium smelter

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

#226

Post by donatj »

Hear me out, I’m an Android guy at heart and I genuinely believe the lightning connector is vastly superior.

I never have lightning connectors fail to seat, nor fall out of a socket while I’m using a device, nor have I ever broken a lightning connector on a device.

These are all seemingly fundamental problems with USB-C. I have had THREE USB-C sockets fail on two phones through normal use, on Pixel and OnePlus devices. I have never had a USB socket of any other type fail on any device, and I’ve had umpteen cellphones since the late 90s. I genuinely baby my electronics.

Almost every USB-C socket after a couple months of use loses its gripping power, whereas the lightning connector on my 2017 iPad I’m writing this on right now is still fantastically grippy. The USB-C on my current phone, a year old Pixel 3A XL is so loose that while mounted to my cars dash, the cable pops out when taking hard turns. The socket is clear of debris, and will do so with a brand new cable. It just has zero holding power left after only a year.

I think the vast majority of people who prefer USB-C are those who haven’t spent a significant amount of time with both. iPhone users who blindly assume the other side is greener, and Android users mocking Apples weird connector.

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

#227

Post by GhostVII »

Am I the only one who thinks this is completely insane, just based on principle? How have we reached a point where we think it is OK for the government to tell me that I can't buy a phone without a specific charger. This isn't a safety issue, and there isn't any massive infrastructure requirement, let people make their own decisions.

If I want to make a crazy phone that is 2mm thin and needs some special charger, I shouldn't be banned by the government from doing so. And if I have some charging port that I think is better than USB-C, I shouldn't have to lobby the government to get it implemented.

Right now new phones either have lightning, or USB-C. Seems pretty reasonable to me. USB-C is not faultless - imagine if we had been stuck with micro-USB instead.

How about the government leaves us alone and lets us make our own decisions. I think that would be nice. Just make people pay for their externalities.

Hopefully in practice, all this means is that Apple will include a lightning to USB-C converter in the box.

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

#228

Post by danhor »

foxfluff wrote: post #168
foota wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's a lot harder problem, since there's a wide variety of needs that general batteries will have, vs smartphone chargers (and not even smartphone batteries)

There are some hard parts (e.g. I don't expect mechanical compatibility across appliances anytime soon) and easy parts (charging). There's really nothing fancy about the chargers that all the appliances use. USB PD isn't designed for smartphone batteries, it can power lots of things, including laptops, monitors, soldering irons, large power banks. Appliances' batteries are hardly any different from a power bank. Ther…

With the new usb-c pd standard 48V is possible.

A step-up converter would probably make more sense though, since the power requirement is not >100W.

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

#229

Post by mclightning »

cube00 wrote: post #224
mclightning wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure mechanical engineers calculated the entry, insertion distance and wiggle room, so that you can't apply any relevant force onto the notch inside.

Wish they had done the same with Micro-USB, those get real flaky after a while.

They always do. These things have mechanical physical standards as well as the electronic/software side.

Micro-USB requires more force because of its 2 teeth underneath, that's made to latch onto the socket. That was a mistake. In comparison, Mini-USB don't have this problem and slides straight similarly to USB-C in that sense.

A lot of thought process goes into this mechanical interaction of male/female plug/sockets.

I design/3d printed a lot of mechanical stuff for hobby for some years now. You can't make stuff work without calculating these tolerances. I am sure professionals who work on standards know/do better than me.

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

#230

Post by ghostDancer »

GhostVII wrote: post #227

Am I the only one who thinks this is completely insane, just based on principle? How have we reached a point where we think it is OK for the government to tell me that I can't buy a phone without a specific charger. This isn't a safety issue, and there isn't any massive infrastructure requirement, let people make their own decisions. If I want to make a crazy phone that is 2mm thin and needs some special charger, I s…

Do you remember when every phone had a different charger?. I do it was crazy, stupid and expensive. They had to regulate it. Now is starting again.
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