I write a little about gadgets. I own my share, and then some. So when I heard the latest news about a world effort to unite phone chargers, I was interested, to say the least. Don’t get me wrong this isn’t about joining all phone charges together to compare amps and ohms and kilocycles. It’s about ONE… One charger, the big cheese, the daddy - Oh! , the Pièce de résistance.

Imagine one charger for all mobile phones on the planet. No more digging through the box at the Marriott Courtyard searching for the cord that, please..please, fits my phone. I know, it’s almost too much to bare.

In the last few days the International Telecommunication Union, or ITU , announced in Copenhagen it backs the idea of a Universal Charging Solution, or UCS to most of us.  One size fits all for all future mobile phones regardless of make or model. The mini-USB is the ITU choice, currently used by most Blackberry, HTC and Motorola phones. One rather larger player in the mobile phone industry is missing in all of this - Apple. But with a worldwide standard on the horizon look for the change.

Not only will the “do I have the right connector” issue disappear, but so will the carbon footprint. According to the ITU, energy efficiency is another advantage.

Director of ITU’s Telecommunication Standardization Bureau (TSB), Malcolm Johnson said: “This is a significant step in reducing the environmental impact of mobile charging, which also has the benefit of making mobile phone use more straightforward. Universal chargers are a commonsense solution that I look forward to seeing in other areas.”

Standardization of the solution within ITU was completed by Study Group 5 - Environment and Climate Change, and will hasten broad adoption by industry. Based on the Micro-USB interface, UCS chargers will also include a 4-star or higher efficiency rating - up to three times more energy-efficient than an unrated charger.

What does this mean to those in the media world?  Just ask your multimedia journalist.  Reducing the amount of stuff a journalist needs to take into the field  creates efficiency, and helps remove just one more obstacle.

I salute the ITU for its forward thinking, but to be honest before today, I never heard of them.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 26th, 2009 at 7:58 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.