Last step to phone chargers standardization in the EU

Standardizing charger slots for smartphones, tablets, etc. is a pain for lots of users, but the one who is most frustrated is European Union. The European Commission has repeatedly tried to bring order to this mess, which results in an increase in e-waste, but without any success.

Much of the credit for the failure can be attributed to the EU Commission itself, due to its inexpertness or intention to do something, but without sufficient knowledge of the technology itself.

In 2014, they wanted to prescribe the standard for charging mobile phones to be microUSB, which had been out of date at the time, as the new USB-C standard offered many advantages.

Back in that era, the first manufacturer to skillfully evade that directive was Apple, with its Lightning slot, which, to be honest, was superior to microUSB. Other manufacturers quickly adopted USB-C, which, ironically, Apple introduced on MacBooks.

Now, eight years later, the EU Commission is still trying to implement its idea and prescribe USB-C as the standard, which at the moment has no real alternative. However, all these years when Android manufacturers massively switched to the new standard, Apple still kept its, now obsolete, Lightning slot for some reason. However, some rumors suggest that this could change soon.

In addition to the cable connection, the EU Commission wants to standardize wireless charging too, but this could be a problem. Namely, the market is now really cluttered, as each manufacturer supports strictly its own standard, so you can’t charge a Samsung phone quickly on the OnePlus fast charger, and vice versa, regardless of how much the latter had more power output.

Another thing to be standardized, at least on European soil, are laptop chargers. Although a good part of them already come with a USB-C port, most still use the old ones, practically from the beginning of the century, many efforts will still have to be made by the manufacturers.

The key date is June 7, when the new regulation should be passed, which means the details will be known in a few days.