Universal Cell Phone Charger

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I don’t know about you, but I hate it when I go away for the weekend, or for an extended trip, and forget my cell phone charger! If it’s just the weekend you absolutely hate the idea of paying for another charger when you will be home in a few days, but at the same time you need your cell phone. You may even try to turn the phone off during intervals to save the battery and make it through a day or two. For extended trips you have no choice but to find some electronics store and pay a ridiculous fee for yet another charger so you can use your cell phone when away. Then you get home only to throw the charger in a bin of a dozen other home and car chargers – It looks like a graveyard of past cell phone accessories and waste.

If you too feel this way, then you will also be excited about the announcement of a universal cell phone charger. GSM Association, a mobile phone trade association, has recently announced the introduction of just that: a universal phone charger. They estimate that by 2012 most of the large manufacturers of mobile phones will support this effort and most new mobile phones will support the universal cell phone charger. This charger stems from a micro-USB interface that will allow for the universal application across a variety of brands including Motorola, Nokia, LG, Qualcomm, Samsung and Sony.

While this is absolutely sure to save you, the consumer, money, the hope from the universal mobile phone charger is to reduce e-waste greatly. E-waste, of course, a huge problem our society currently faces, will be reduced because you won’t have to buy a home and car charger every time you get a new phone, or every time you loose one and need to replace it. If every phone uses the charger, then you could borrow someone else’s charger and even hotels could stock a few to use on a trip if you have forgotten your own.

I personally think this is an ingenious idea and a very unselfish notation by the cell phone manufacturers, since they will surely make less profit from the phone accessories. This is a great innovation, and I hope other electronic industries follow suite.