EU: Call to introduce common charger for all mobile phones • Hacker News Board

Re: EU: Call to introduce common charger for all mobile phones

#181

Post by thesmok » Tue, Jan 14, 2020, 2:32 PM UTC

_Microft wrote: post #143

fierarul wrote: post #25

Why stop at mobile phones? Is there a reason laptops need so many different connectors? I am willing to bet many random connectors are just planned obsolescence or a secondary revenue stream for producers. Also, let's take this further. Any reason laptop displays can't internally have a rather standardised connector? We are throwing away perfectly good displays on broken laptops. What if I could buy a $20 adaptor and…

Another example: I have an electric razor which takes up to 1A at 5V (DC). Sounds perfect for a USB charger, right? It does not have a USB connector but a proprietary thing. The one with the USB connector is labelled travel razor and costs 20 € more. It's outrageous because most likely the USB connector is even cheaper than the other because it is produced in much higher numbers. If the charger dies before the machin…

A watertight USB connector is more expensive than just two pins molded in-place through the plastic.

Re: EU: Call to introduce common charger for all mobile phones

#182

Post by thesmok » Tue, Jan 14, 2020, 2:38 PM UTC

rb808 wrote: post #120

> A common charger should fit all mobile phones, tablets, e-book readers and other portable devices, MEPs will insist. The more important part is that those devices shouldn't ship with their own charger. You should have one already, or you should be able to buy a good quality efficient one.

From my observations, people tend to buy the cheapest possible charger, if buying separately. And cheap chargers are often dangerous.

Re: EU: Call to introduce common charger for all mobile phones

#183

Post by dublin » Tue, Jan 14, 2020, 7:19 PM UTC

ksec wrote: post #170

dublin wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't get the love for USB-C here. It's really a horrible design - it's a huge step backwards from the "mag-safe" power connector Apple used to use (at least Microsoft uses a similar connector on its Surface computers, which is one more reason to love them), it fills with lint, dust and gunge even worse than the Lightning connector (which is unacceptable), and worst, USB-C is the most egregious tarpit of unk…

I only like USB-C for the power delivery. I dont like USB-C in itself at all.

Good luck making that distinction in the real world - the VietNam of data standards comes right along with the power capabilities. FWIW, I'm hugely in favor of a version of PoE that ditches the outrageously expensive 1500V isolation requirement (which is ignored in some cheap PoE PD hardware, anyway), but it's probably 10-20 years too late for that...

Re: EU: Call to introduce common charger for all mobile phones

#184

Post by zaarn » Wed, Jan 15, 2020, 6:49 PM UTC

dTal wrote: post #180

microtherion wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I was thinking that getting stuck on micro-USB for an years or decades would have been a less than happy outcome. Not quite sure what to think of USB-C yet. Certainly feels more mechanically solid than micro-USB, but subjectively, the plug connection seems a bit slippery. Cables seem to disconnect spontaneously more than they do with e.f. Lightning.

> Yeah, I was thinking that getting stuck on micro-USB for an years or decades would have been a less than happy outcome. It would have been wonderful. It seems like every time a connector starts to reach the critical mass of adoption where I actually have a reasonable ecosystem of chargers and cables and devices, they go ahead and change it - usually for the worse. mini-USB was great - I had phones, accessories, the…

>- I have a new phone that charges over USB-C - but only fast charges with the included adapter, which looks like a regular USB-A wall adapter + A->C plug but actually has some proprietary magic in it. Something about "unusual fast charging standards".

USB-PD is standardized. Don't blame USB if the manufacturer decides to not implement it.

>- Since I now have a 85W USB-C charger lying around, I thought I'd try it on my new phone. But if I plug the Apple adapter into the phone it makes very loud and alarming capacitor noises, especially when full - enough to wake me up in the middle of the night when it gets to 100% (and it takes until the middle of the night, because it doesn't fast charge).

It#s not entirely unusual that cheaper charging circuits start to humm in the audible range if far under their designed output power.

Re: EU: Call to introduce common charger for all mobile phones

#185

Post by o-__-o » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 1:22 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #44

fierarul wrote: post #25

Why stop at mobile phones? Is there a reason laptops need so many different connectors? I am willing to bet many random connectors are just planned obsolescence or a secondary revenue stream for producers. Also, let's take this further. Any reason laptop displays can't internally have a rather standardised connector? We are throwing away perfectly good displays on broken laptops. What if I could buy a $20 adaptor and…

If we’d introduced this 20 years ago, think about how much e-waste we could have avoided. Also think about your screen would look at analog signal 1280x1024, because that would likely be the limit of the standard connector chosen at the time.

I used to run 1600x1200 on my VGA monitors 20 years ago.