EU plans to force OEMs to use a common charger for all phones

Now days of course, they’re all moving to wireless charging anyway.

What is the efficiency of wireless charging?

But it will give them some years.

Existing customers, yes. Apple are probably trying to grow their market share though, which means they also need to consider those people who have usb cables too.

But it is Apple, who knows what they are going to do to avoid regulation.

Apple was on the USB-design committee (and lightning experience informed the design) and knew all the timing. The standard wasn’t even finalized for quite some time after Apple started shipping lightning.

Lightning has now been around longer than the 30-pin connector, I really don’t understand Apple’s reluctance. I go of my way to by Type C devices for simplicity’s sake, though still have to travel with micro-A, Type C, lightning, and a special watch charger, grr. At least I have only one type of power brick.

I don't think it's this. Lightning was superior to micro-USB, but it's certainly not superior to USB-C.

I think the problem is that everyone remembers the transition from the 30 pin dock connector to Lightning. Apple has a huge reputation for just changing their cables all the time.

This is largely unwarranted. For the portable devices they had 30-pin for ~10 years, then lightning for ~10 years, and it looks like it's on its way out soon. I think 10 years is a fairly reasonable time to keep ecosystems the same. People don't have 10 year old cables and chargers around.

This reputation is pervasive though. I think they're holding off until they can drop the cable entirely in 1-2 years.

So I suggest

4. They think lightning may become a real standard, everyone will adopt it, with licensing fees.

Reason 1 I can kind of understand (if valid).

Apple will still find a way to do what they want, especially given they play a non-trivial role in the USB-IF and provided significant resources towards developing USB-C in the first place.

I would like USB-C on my iPhone, but I think the biggest reason why Apple hasn't done it is just because of momentum, and that it _is_ a switch from the current situation.

In theory sure but in practice there are thinner Android phones with USB-C connectors than any iPhone. Basically these days the thickness is purely about how good camera you want and how much battery. The usb/lightning plug is not really an issue.

For the record the thinnest iPhone is iPhone 5 at 7.6 mm and thinnest Android is Xiaomi Mi 11 Lite at 6.8mm

Also from a purely user experience point of view making the phones thinner then they mostly are now does not add anything instead just makes the experience worse as the phone will feel worse when hold (if the other dimensions and weight stay the same)

This always struck me as a solution looking for a problem. Are modern phones really that chunky that we have to sacrifice functionality to shave a few fractions of a mm?

The argument that its a physically smaller port feels like an "Apple circa-2016" argument, not an "Apple circa-2021" argument. They just made the iPhone 13 0.25mm thicker to fit a bigger battery (among other things); I think they've moved past the "thinner at any cost" argument (though I do believe that was an argument for lightning at one time).

"Control" is a tenuous given they've thrown USBC/Thunderbolt on everything except the iPhone. They already have a massive voice inside the USB-IF; switching the iPhone to USBC would only increase their strength among the USB community. And sure, they'd still have to be standards compliant, but I really don't think "lightning 2.0" is ever coming, period. I think they have the hard metrics to prove that 0.1% of iPhone users ever use that port for anything except charging.

And selling more cables is also tenuous. They'll sell USB-C cables anyway; I just paid them $30 or whatever for one for my laptop charger, because the two offbrand ones Best Buy sold me couldn't carry 85 watts.

The best argument I've ever heard for lightning is actually: Physically, its a MUCH sturdier connector. Just look at the inside of a USBC female port, versus lightning. There's just less stuff; USBC has a big tooth that sticks out, whereas lightning is just contacts along the outside. Lightning connectors, and cables, are much simpler, and thus less likely to experience damage over time.

So, yeah; I think they want to skip USBC and go right to Qi, basically seal up the entire outside of the phone. And I can't say I disagree; my iPhone only ever charges over Qi. But, maybe its worthwhile to just make them keep USBC around, if for no other reason than e-waste.

The lightning cable is not required for the MFi program, you can certify lots of things for MFi. Not sure why they couldn't expand the program to USB-C cables. They might do it already, honestly.

To me, this smells like internal turf protection or politics.

In general it's easy to see also that the lightning connector itself is far more exposed to the environment than any of the USB connectors which are largely enclosed.

A trouble with lightning is the dust etc. gets stuck in the phone socket - I've had to replace two at like £50 a go. Getting a new cable is often easier.

Which means that the part which wears over time (the springs) is on the port instead of the cable.

On USB-C, the springs are all in the cable; the port is a single flat piece (the tab in the middle) surrounded by a metallic shield.

Additionally, Lightning plug connectors have a higher tendency to corrode. This is, I believe because the exposed mating surface on the plug end easily gathers debris (in particular e.g. oils and grease), and that can cause poor contact which can result in oxidation due to heating and electrolytic effects. USB-C does not have this problem, as none of the mating surfaces are exposed to being touched. The debris that tends to collect inside USB-C ports is usually solid fluff, not liquids.

And Lightning is just a terrible standard anyway. iPhones to this day use compressed video over USB2 for their "HDMI" output dongles (which actually have an Ax class CPU in them just to decode the video) because Apple were too short-sighted in their design to allow for enough expandability to support uncompressed digital video properly.

I'm sure that's the same argument every phone manufacture made before the EU legislated it and Apple found their loophole.

An adapter to fit on the end of the lightening could alleviate that problem until people have switched.

go look for phone charger waste and why it is important to stop having 4685486468478 different type of chargers, people are very selfish in this thread

You can also put whatever voltage that can be physically handled over the power pins after negotiating with the other side. USB-PD is the common standard but it can be extended.

I am interested in that (because the "secret history" of many market driven change often ends up being a regulator in one influential area made a good decision - the usual example being California and car pollution standards)

Edit: just to say I am not commenting either way on the EU here, or on regulators in general. I am just interested if there was a clear point in USB standards process that EU intervention made a difference.

If so it would be useful to know their track record in this when judging this situation.

Worse yet, "before micro-USB", chargers universally had a captive cable. Situation that GP describes - same charger, 3 cables - is already an improvement on that.

>That's because of EU regulation.

Patently untrue: the Micro USB has won over proprietary connectors before the EU regulation, thanks to being cheaper than ever-changing charging & data cables that used to be the norm. That in turn was possible through large volume, and also through well designed standard; it was the third iteration of the plug - after original full sized A/B, and after the somewhat underwhelming Mini USB.

In particular the Micro USB was specced for quite good reliability - including 10,000 plug-unplug cycles, which is quite high for consumer grade hardware, and that was made possible thanks to the sheer experience amassed over years by the USB consortium. Not by regulator's fiat.

That currently USB-C is ruling the market is again thanks to USB consortium's active push, together with large volume of all sorts of devices using it.

Everyone else was using micro USB for years before usb-C. So for years, every phone cable except Apple could also be used to charge your headphones, Kindle, Tablet, etc. It isn’t just phones we are talking about. When pretty much all devices are on one standard, and Apple refuses, that is where the e waste comes from. All my micro usb cables are still useful for random older products around the house. All my USB C cables are useful for random newer products around the house. My lightning cable is useful for exactly one item around my house ever at any given time. I have zero other uses for it. People don’t need to go out and buy new chargers and cables because they already have them for their other devices. That’s the whole point of interoperability.

The people also talk about huge profits apple is making on charging cables, which just doesn't make sense if you take even a cursory glance at the price of lightning cables on Amazon. I saw numerous multi packs of cables selling for ~$2.25 for a 6ft+ cables. Apple has already signaled the direction they are going with charging standards, and it's USB-C. They are just waiting for the supported lifetime of the lightning cable to be over.

They sold the iPhone with a USB-A charging brick for like 12 years. Then when the iPhone 11 came out in 2019, it came with a USB-C charging brick and a USB-C to Lightning cable, which would not work with any of the chargers they bundled for the past decade and some. And then, one year after changing the cable, they took away the USB-C charging brick.

"Just use the ones you already have" when you'd only have a wall charger that could take the cable that came in the box if you bought the iPhone 11 as well, or bought a separate charger.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079LYHNSR

A device that uses no power, like a rock, is clearly beyond the scope of this law ("electronic devices").

- food waste and related food wrapping waste

- planned obsolescence (TVs, cars, washing machines, and just about every product out there)

- car-oriented architecture in the cities, where public transportation is an afterthought

- energy waste due to personal infrastructure/tooling (cooking/washing/heating infra, personal TV vs shared screening rooms, etc)

- war and social control: what's the environmental cost (transportation, manufacture of mechanical/chemical weapons) of repression (of, say an environmental protest like the anti-COP21 movement)? what about an outright war on a foreign nation?

These are just examples, but environmental concerns are rather "easy" to tackle given proper political will. The problem is people concerned with the coming ecological apocalypse are either ignored, silenced, bullied, mutilated or murdered by Nation States and multinationals.

>Even the seemingly most basic function of USB-C — powering devices — continues to be a mess of compatibility issues, conflicting proprietary standards, and a general lack of consumer information to guide purchasing decisions.

https://www.androidauthority.com/state-of-usb-c-870996/

But Apple didn't want to listen and now the EU commission is sick of it and introduces a law. It's the industry's own damn fault that it didn't take the hand that reached out to it.

I think it's fine to be stuck on a "good enough" standard, if this results in less e-waste and less need to upgrade all accessories simply because the dominant connection port changed.

If we wanted to have the standard update itself every 15 years or so, we can have a body dedicated to selecting, or creating, such a standard. We don't write automotive standards directly into our laws, so we don't have to the same with charging port technology either. As the maxim goes, "every problem of computer science can be solved with another layer of indirection, except for having too many layers of indirection".

It will be interesting to know how the connector is agreed upon and by whom.

Plus, this is such a minor issue. You get a device and the charger for it and that is the end of it. If you buy multiple devices that you carry around with incompatible chargers then you carry (assuming you even need to charge on the road) a couple of cables (or one with multiple connectors). It's about as much of a none issue as you will ever get.

Based on other recent legislation from the EU that I've had to work closely with, I would say the EU legislators are very aware of the pitfalls that come with writing a specific technology into law. They seem to deal with this by writing an initial recommendation, or providing a few concrete examples of how to conform int to the law. But hand off the longer term management to some sort of agency or regulator that already exists, and instructs them to work directly with industry to fine tune the technical aspects.

Taking this approach create a natural escape hatch for new standards being introduced without new law being written. It'll still create a natural dampener on innovation in specific area, but it avoid completely stifling it.

Also on quick FYI, USB-B has never been used on a modern mobile phone. The port is bigger than most phones!

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:USB-3.0-Stecker_(Typ...

No, this has to be voted by the parliament like any law, not approved by each member.

> getting this into law has already been in the works for years and years

The goal was to not require a law and make manufacturers agree to a standard without legislation, because that makes it easier to evolve.

Apple is the only one that wouldn't agree to that, so that means it has to become a law apparently, otherwise they won't do anything.

If a new standard appears, I expect the USB-IF to notify the EU while they're working on it so that legislation can evolve in time. The EU parliament is very quick to pass new laws when necessary.

I mean, USB 4 can already do up to 40 Gbps, and upcoming versions of the standard are said to be going to 80 Gbps[1]

[1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/16858/intel-executive-posts-t...

To me, I don't see why government has any business in USB. Bluetooth maybe since it takes up the air. But USB? It's bad enough that wall sockets haven't improved. Will we be stuck with USB-C long after its natural EOL?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mains_electricity_by_country

And at least in the US I believe the regulations are local building codes

Go tell that to Moses.

But in the US, I very much view it as once something is legislated it becomes a permanent fixture of our society.

When traveling outside the EU, it's still best to buy a local SIM to avoid the ludicrous roaming charges, but there's no need to do that within the EU anymore.

In the particular case of USB-C, it’s a bit puzzling since it’s not actually an interoperable standard. For example, while the charger shape is the same, I can’t charge my laptop with my phone charger. Maybe the legislation accounts for this, but it’s a bit of a disappointing standard to cement.

> “legislation isn’t set in stone”

I suspect it’s an order of magnitude more difficult to change that legislation than it would be for the market to bring another standard. You might say, “if the Americans have some new fangled charger, the Europeans might demand change from their government”, but it’s pretty unlikely that anyone will invest on a new charger that they won’t be able to sell in Europe. For example, most phone manufacturers are unlikely to make a Euro-only variant, but will rather make a USB-C phone for the whole world, much like how Americans have to suffer through GDPR cookie notifications even though GDPR doesn’t apply to us.

Lastly, is interoperability even a problem? I remember the bad old days before USB and interoperability didn’t really exist because every adapter was proprietary and expensive, but I can’t remember the last time I had an issue. Similarly, are these chargers a major source of e-waste? And how much of that is this legislation going to change? Cords will still wear our and be thrown away whether they are USB-C or Thunderbolt.

If it was one of the dozen or so variations of little USB with 2% or 3% market share each you'd have a point, but those have mostly gone already.

I don't expect Lightning to be around forever, but then I don't expect USB-C to be around forever either. Some day it will be super-ceded - should be super-ceded.

Apple has shown remarkable consistency and discipline in managing it's connector designs. Far, far more so than any other manufacturer I can think of. They were also at the forefront of adopting USB-C in the first place and spearheaded making it so popular.

I believe that in general consumer laws should say that companies cannot create interoperability problems for it's own sake and when doing so must have a salient technical reason, whether the reason is so salient is for a court to decide.

But that is a more specific version of my more general view that I believe that any form of crippleware, defined as companies investing time and resources into generating an inferior quality product should be illegal.

Essentially, I believe that companies can only make a worse product from a consumer perspective, if it were cheaper for them to make that product, they must be legally required to not make a product worse except to cut their own production costs.

Researching and producing their own port when an existing port suffices their needs would fall under this.

How's that going with the EU cookie legislation?

Regulations can be changed, but its not easy.

If this regulation was proposed in 2005, would we even have usb-c? or would the mobile world still be stuck on mini-usb because that is what the EU would have mandated at that time?

I don't want my cell phone designed by an EU committee.

The legislation has risk because USBC is ill suited to many things and it's best to let manufactures make that decision.

The EU legislators are a buit lazy on this one: they are legislation what is 'in front of their faces' (i.e. the phones they use) without recognizing the impact might not be what they think.

Now - where there is a non-standard situation (remember A/C adapters?) - then it would actually help for an engineering body to set some kind of standard - but that should probably be a standards body, and not the EU.

As long as manufacturers are using some measure of standardization that would be fine.

A more rational (but difficult) approach would be to figure out a method and system for disposing or recycling the cords.

"Or course not, it's not like legislation is set in stone and will never change."

Government legislation does not keep pace with innovation, it lags it considerably. Not only that, it tends to stagnate. As such it risks becoming a limiting factor and push the dynamism to Asia.

I think requiring the use of standard connectors would be fine, but they mostly already do.

Creating an electronics recycling program would be actually smart, and have positive impact on the environment, but that's hard.

The other advantage is that since it is so large, if you get dust and stuff in it you can often use something non-conductive to clean it out.

That's why when Europeans talk about "freedom" from your boss, Americans get confused. In America if you can privatize a thing (no matter how monopolistically) it isn't a "freedom" infringement (e.g. HOAs) because that isn't what the term freedom means there.

That's why corporations run rampant in the US and the citizens continue to pushback on any government attempted intervention because that government intervention is viewed as a freedom-problem but the corporate invasion is not.

Going to stick my neck out, and some might say this is just a slippery slope fallacy, but should governments mandate choice of programming languages? It would certainly help interoperability and longevity of code - just like with connectors.

Anyway on an emotion level it just feels wrong.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/09/european-union-annou...

Agreed, so why bother with government intervention? The benefit is small and the potential long-term costs associated with retarding technological development are high.

https://ec.europa.eu/growth/sectors/electrical-engineering/r...

I’d like to see that mandated on all devices.

For everything else? Maybe with somewhat reduced speed/features but good enough.

If we all shift the buying the wall charger separately, hopefully something can be done about the wide variety of incompatible fast-ish charging systems. Rather than everyone revert to the lowest common standard of a very slow charge.

There's no need for everything to be lowest-common-denominator. Product management is not statistics, it is aspirational leadership for upward mobility in human values, including but not limited to function, form, and creative power. e.g. a tiny minority of humans create art for millions, yet both can use the same device + accessories, if devices are not neutered.

Should human time spent waiting for phone chargers be a metric for central planning regulation? e.g. what does a 100% speed increase in rapid charging mean for the economy, vs. travelers waiting at an airport or cafe, or running their car to charge their phone?

The laws of physics still apply to wired audio, networking and electricity, no matter how many billions are spent on glitzy ads for wireless.

wireless charging uses more energy than cable one, so it is not that eco friendly

Network effects mean that some apps are only on iOS and Android. Of those two, only iOS has a net-effective security and privacy story, if used without iCloud.

The free market includes feedback from existing users. Microsoft learned that over time. Even Apple does, reversing course on keyboards and touch bar.

A good amp/DAC combo in the phone is much cheaper than an external amp/DAC of similar quality.

Also, more ports on USB-C make for better "alternate mode" functionality, where some data lanes are re-purposed (with an analog mux) for another use, like displayport, or audio DAC.

In later revisions (at least starting with micro USB, perhaps mini as well), the cable was explicitly designed to be the part prone to breakage, as it's easier to replace.

FWIW there was not.

There was the threat of legislation, which led to an MoU, and the EC expressed satisfaction with the results. In fact multiple manufacturers effectively reconducted the MoU unrequired (but probably to show good faith and further mitigate the risk of legislative action)

Absolutely!

The sheer amount of optional features in USB-C cables makes charging - in particular fast charging, and charging tablet/laptop sized devices - a hit-or-miss game.

USB-C's design was made to balance of costs with regards to client device complexity: 12 pins in total, three twisted pair signalling pathways, of which two are optional. All this is because both of need for backwards compatibility, and also current limitations on low-power, low-cost USB devices that need compat back to USB 1.1. Two thirds could conceivably be done away, using two pins for power and two for singalling. On a large volume production, a smaller number of pins pays off in costs - once Super Speed-grade transceivers are cheap enough for all devices. Alternatively, once optical interconnect becomes cheap enough, we could return to that technology - two power pins & one optical connector. For example Thunderbolt originally started out as optical connector [1], and was only later shifted to copper due to still costly technology.

A phone would also benefit from a contact connector similar to Apple's magsafes (attached via magnets) rather than insertion plug; both due to mechanical concerns and also savings on internal space. That we are stuck with plugs and sockets is largely artifact of requirements for uses other than charging, including pendrives & other USB dongles.

Lastly, a clear directionality hint to charging cables would be good: if you connect a phone to a tablet, which should charge which? Some sort of marking or indicator for the (rare) ambiguous case would be nice.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_(interface)#Copper...

USB PD isn't designed for smartphone batteries, it can power lots of things, including laptops, monitors, soldering irons, large power banks. Appliances' batteries are hardly any different from a power bank. There is no "battery smarts" in the charger itself, it just gives juice to a charge controller located by the battery. I don't know if it scales enough to be usable for 48V appliances, but a lot of stuff could be powered by a common interface (and, conversely, most large batteries could easily double as a power bank, and they indeed do if you just attach the right electronics downstream of it; having this built-in would be an interesting step).

https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/23/22689432/eu-iphone-usb-c-...

Somehow my 25W USB-PD original genuine Samsung charger doesn't charge my 2021 iPad Pro which normally uses a 20W USB-C charger...it just makes no sense.

How would it significantly reduce ewaste? Most phones - including the iPhone - come with a cable that connects to a USB-A or USB-C port. I guess it would reduce the amount of male lightning to female USB-C dongles manufactured, but that seems pretty inconsequential.

[1] https://www.apple.com/nl/iphone-13-pro/specs/

And right now we don't have a tonne of different chargers, we have two, both of which are good in different ways.

Why should it stop at USB-C? What will be the requirements for throughput and size in six years time?