Hacker News Reader

Comment by alsothings | Hacker News Reader

I find it notable that this article entirely ignores the EU's Common Electrical Power Supply law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_External_Power_Supply), which effectively mandated that all smart phones sold in the EU use micro USB for power. This had a swift and noticeable effect in the diversity of connectors in phones (basically Apple is the only maker that doesn't use micro USB and this change happened at the exact time of the law). The emergence of USB as The Way Phones are Charged didn't happen as a magic emergent property, but via considered government regulation. Government: it can actually work.

View on HN

It only worked because USB was already the defacto standard.

Now if they could just get a EU wide AC plug/socket standard.

USB was defacto standard for data transfer, especially on PCs, but the /connector/ on the phone side was not at all standards compliant or uniform across makes and models, and up until the passage of that law, it wasn't uncommon for the power port to be separate. Now that is basically unheard of. I'm not saying the law is the only reason for this change, but it is clearly a big factor, yet it is omitted from this article.

Indeed, it was common for a USB-to-proprietary cable to be sold separately for at an additional charge. Now phone manufacturers are forced to resort to software to make it difficult to move data between phones and desktops. ;-)

You'll take BS1363 from our cold dead hands. Or we'll leave them upturned for you to step on.

As a continental who has moved to the UK, I have to agree. BS1363 seems to be the best design:

* it's mechanically sound, as opposed to Europlug which tends to wiggle and Schuko which is sometimes difficult to plug and especially unplug

* earthing is mandatory and the earth pin is guaranteed to connect before the others

* the sockets have shutters which only open after the earth pin has been plugged (good for child safety for example)

* the live and neutral line are shrouded to avoid shocks and the coin problem [0] when the pins are only partially plugged in

* it is polarised, so devices can have the fuse on the live line

* the plug is fused

[0] http://www.trademe.co.nz/media/23333/cpin-insulation-plug-sh...

I think it's still a design that is far larger than it needs to be. You could reconfigure the plug to use blades like the US and be in parallel like the italian plug. Then you can add shutters, shrouded pins, polarized pins and fuses and still be incredibly more compact. On top of it, the design will work well with folding plugs like many camera battery chargers yet still be grounded. That combination seems like the best.

Most of that is good except for the fuse. The only reason for the fuse is because of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_circuit which was only used during copper shortages.

The fuse makes the plug much much larger than it needs to be.

The American size, with some shrouding, would be better. Newer American plugs already have shutters and everything else you mentioned.

Plus, the thing's the size of a grapefruit and usable as an impromptu flail.

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

Why doesn't the Europlug have a ground?

From the link: Europlugs are only designed for low-power (less than 2.5 A) Class II (double-insulated) devices that operate at normal room temperature and do not require a protective-earth connection.

In addition to what 'stevek' wrote; the Europlug was designed so that it would fit many existing, incompatible European plugs.

One of the things that makes the European plugs incompatible is that they ahve different types of earthing. One example is Sweden versus Switzerland. In Sweden, the common socket has earth on the sides of the plug (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schuko) whereas in Switzerland the earth is a pin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_power_plugs_and_sockets#Swis...).

By not having an earth, the Europlug fits both the Swiss and Swedish sockets.

Will never happen. But if ever, the Swiss design is imho the best one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_power_plugs_and_sockets#Swis...

"plugs partially inserted into non-recessed sockets present a shock hazard"

A definite plus! I like it.

And 20 years from now government will still be working as we are trying to connect a 26-year-old micro usb cable in one attempt.

> which effectively mandated that all smart phones sold in the EU use micro USB for power

The very Wikipedia article you linked to contradicts this statement: "compliance is voluntary"

Compliance is voluntary with the underlying threat that 1. the commission would define and impose a standard if manufacturers didn't voluntarily do so, and 2. the EC could use stronger coercion if the MoU was not respected/complied with.

If it had been such a good and manufacturer-supported idea, they wouldn't have waited the EC's intervention to suddenly and massively abandon proprietary charging ports.

> The emergence of USB as The Way Phones are Charged didn't happen as a magic emergent property, but via considered government regulation. Government: it can actually work.

This is such nonsense, I don't even know where to begin. This was already the case in the US and there is no government mandate for it to be that way.

Are you going to give credit to the EU for that too?

They simply passed that regulation after it was already clear that things were going to end up there. It was a recognition of the status quo, it had zero effect.

It sounds about right to me. For example, I have a Samsung phone that predates the EU agreement by a couple of years and even though it charges off 5V at USB current levels and uses USB for data syncing, the charging/data connector is some proprietary Samsung one and it can't charge from a USB port with the official cable. There's a couple of Samsung connectors, Sony Ericsson had one, Nokia favoured barrel jacks with various oddball voltage and current requirements, and Motorola Razr phones used the mini USB port for charging in a way that was incompatible with everything else.

> This is such nonsense, I don't even know where to begin. This was already the case in the US and there is no government mandate for it to be that way.

History please.

The USB-socket-in-the-phone standard for recharging phones started once China demanded _de jure_ in 2006 that all data-enabled phones could be recharged using mini/micro-USB. That request had a huge impact: at that time Nokia produced phones with data-only USB ports that could not be used to charge the phone. Suddenly "+1" and "C" models of Nokia's phone started appearing, all with the ability to charge using the USB port. Initially these models where sold only in Asia, then the producers started selling them everywhere, just to streamline the production.

Then, in 2008, the EU Commission asked the producers of mobile handsets to agree on a standard, whatever standard. If they could not came up with a single solution the Commission threatened that they would _impose_ a solution.

In 2010 all the big producers agreed to use micro USB. That was an easy choice, as they were already forced to use it for all the phones sold in China.

In 2010/2011 the CEN and ETSI standardization bodies sat down and produced a spec that mirrors the micro-USB spec.

Now, in 2013, the EU is about to set the CEN spec in stone.

Governments played a big role here. China's regulations first and EU "pressure" later is what lead us to the current status.

No, the EU mandate certainly had a large effect in the US. Why would manufacturers bother using two different charging port standards per model when they're only being compelled to use one? You must have a short memory if you've already forgotten just how recently the market was still riddled with Mini-USB and a hodgepodge of other connection formats.

> This was already the case in the US and there is no government mandate for it to be that way.

Hah, in 2009? It really, really wasn't. I bought an off-the-shelf flip phone in 2010 that still used some godawful proprietary connector.

One of my roommates had a phone that used mini-USB, but it was the wrong end (mini-A instead of mini-B), which is a lot like buying an MP3 player and finding a 3.5mm prong sticking out of it instead of a socket. I absolutely do credit government intervention in China and the EU with forcing manufacturers to clean up their act.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com