Universal charger should be available in EU by 2010

Well, it's 2011 now and my new phone still has a non-standard charger!

Excuse me, but is there anything more to do than simply deciding to endorse the USB Battery Charging Specification? This has been with us for well over a year (see www.edn.com/article/CA6531593.html) - why must we wait until 2010? Actually, I can predict why: existing USB chargers don't contain enough gratuitous "IP", and none of the big manufacturers would therefore get to collect patent royalties. They therefore need time to invent some pointless and unnecessary "technology", in order to keep the prices paid by the consumer up. Grrr.

Surely the standardisation cannot go much further than the CONNECTOR, rather than the charger ? To claim to be a universal charger would require either a universal battery else a much more complex & costly power supply to accommodate all devices that have a micro-USB socket ? And I don't know why this news is such a big deal: the Chinese govt has been driving to a micro-USB socket standardisation for mobile phones for a few years now. And it is also an initiative supported by the USB-IF. With the EU signing up I guess (hope) it is a good thing as you would think the more that sign-up the greater chance it has of happening.

This is a brilliant idea to save energy! Not by the fact that you will use less energy using the product, but the dozens of fewer chargers you will need at home and at work, which each take many kilowatts to manufacture. While at 3 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity we don't normally care, when multiplied by the millions of chargers made and then tossed every year when you find out your new phone doesn't work with your old charger, it will add up quickly. I personally only buy products that charge with micro USB connections, which now work with my Cell phone, GPS, Camera and a few other devices.