Mini USB - it’s not just a good idea, now it’s the law!
By Simon Bisson & Mary Branscombe in Editorial
Posted in USB on
A while back we remarked on our preference for power supplies that had mini-USB connectors. There are plenty of reasons for looking for a standard wall wart connector. For one thing there’s no crawling under a desk looking for just the right cable, and for another, well, it’s just less to pack and carry in these days of decreasing luggage allowances.
As Sun’s Simon Phipps says, “I now have a growing collection of useful things that work with this USB power standard, all from different places and all interchangeable. So I have a car-socket-to-USB plug, wall-warts for US & UK that deliver USB, and each new gadget that comes with a USB/mini-USB lead makes it easier to leave a cable ready everywhere. And since most power comes through my computer, there are fewer wall-warts left plugged into power sockets acting as electricity vampires.”
Reducing complexity makes peoples lives easier, and standards help control complexity. In these green days it’s sensible to standardise on one power supply so engineers can design the most efficient PSUs possible, rather than having to come up with something new every time a new gadget is released on an ever gadget hungry world. Not only that, but in an emergency we can charge devices from laptop or desktop PCs. And of course if everyone had the same power supply connectors it would make it a lot easier to borrow a charger in the office…
Some gadget companies are worse than others. Apple’s initial iPods sensibly used FireWire for power and data, while the first shuffles plugged straight into a USB port. Now the Shuffle uses a modified headphone socket for power, and the iPod connector gets more complicated with each generation. It’s USB at one end, so why not USB at both?
Nokia is another company that makes things hard for end users. Its power supplies are getting smaller - but so are the plugs that feed power into the devices. And what’s that right next to the power socket on the latest N95? Yup, you’ve guessed - a USB port used for nothing but data. I won’t go into the awful power supply connectors from Motorola and Palm, as I fear for my sanity if I think about them too much.
Well, it looks like the tide may be turning in the favour of mini-USB chargers. China’s Ministry of Information has just made it illegal to use anything else with new devices. The law is initially targeted at mobile phones (upsetting both Motorola and Nokia). However, there are apparently already 15 approved PSUs from 12 different companies, so it shouldn’t be too difficult for phone manufacturers to source power supplies.Switching to one standard PSU format should also save money, and reduce the number of chargers just thrown away after a device upgrade.
There’s really no reason now to stick with proprietary connectors. The largest emerging market has made the decision for anyone designing hardware - so now we just have to wait for the hardware to ship.
– Simon
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