ITU approves universal cellphone charger standard

Stuart Corner
Friday, 23 October 2009 01:07

Business IT - Technology

And in June, the EU announced that it had persuaded the 10 companies that together take 90 percent of the European handset market - including Apple, LG, Motorola, Nokia, Research in Motion, and Sony Ericsson - to switch to the new charger standard next year - at least for "data enabled" phones.

The GSMA's initiative was welcomed by The Alliance for Universal Power Supplies (AUPS), an umbrella organisation dedicated to fostering industry-wide standards for universal AC to DC power founded in 2007 by Green Plug. Chairman David Canny said: "The GSMA announcement validates our belief that the world needs to stop making unnecessary parts like disposable, device-specific power adapters...We're working to extend this universal, reusable power adapter concept to all electronic devices, not only 5V cellphones."

AUPS claimed that 3.2 billion power supplies were shipped in 2008 alone and said that, "by making power supplies universal and reusable through digital collaboration, manufacturers can eliminate costs, consumers enjoy the convenience of powering any product with any power supply, and significant reductions in solid waste can be achieved."

Energy efficiency in the stars
In 2008 five of the leading mobile handset vendors joined forces to introduce a common rating system to indicate the efficiency of their mobile phone chargers. The new rating system indicates how much energy each charger uses when plugged into the wall socket but not actually charging a phone. A five star charger must consume no more than 0.03 watts on standby and a one star charger between 0.35 and 0.5 watts.

The five vendors - LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung Electronics and Sony Ericsson - said that, if the more than three billion people owning mobile devices switched to a four or five star charger, this could save the same amount of energy each year as produced by two medium sized power plants (whatever a 'medium-sized power plant' is).