As Mobile World Congress gets underway in Barcelona, spare a thought for the humble phone charger... We hear news that the EU Commission is preparing to force mobile phone manufacturers to standardise their plug chargers, in an attempt to eliminate some of the mountains of "e-waste" currently being generated. Legislation, 'foisted' on industry and consumers alike is blamed for everything from the shape of bananas market traders are allowed to sell, to the reason why cars have got so fat and heavy.
But legislation can have a useful role to play in design - I remember being surprised at Aston Martin chief of design, Marek Reichman, telling me that a few years back. And I can't help but think legislation to standardise chargers is a good idea - and long overdue - especially as I survey the box full of old chargers atop my wardrobe. Today, each new mobile phone seems to come with a different means of connection, and a different type of charger. This is annoying if, like me, you fondly remember the days when almost everyone had a Nokia phone, charged by the same unit, meaning that regardless of where you ran out of juice (home, office, car, friend's house...), a phone re-enlivening boost was never far away.
This isn't just about consumer convenience. Every new phone sold in the EU comes with a charger. Consider it's predicted one billion phones will be sold this year - and that in western European countries new phones tend to come free every 18 months, and it's easy to comprehend how big a problem this could be.
Applying what is, in essence, a 'design pattern' for chargers - where the connection between charger and phone is the same for each phone - would remove the need for a new charger to be sold with every phone. This could allow consumers to go on using a single charger for years, rather than - like me - having a box full of different ones on top of your wardrobe. Design patterns like this make sense, when - as the EU points out - there's no major technical reason why each charger should be of a different design.
It's an example of an issue where a group of industry competitors can usefully cooperate - rather than compete - to the mutually benefit of producers and consumers alike. It would save waste, reduce development cost burden, save manufacturing energy and cost, and potentially even boost sales. I only hope that as we begin to move our transport infrastructure base towards electricity, we don't see what has happened with phone chargers, happen with vehicle charging units. Proliferations of different designs and methods of doing the same thing, tends to occur when new products first emerge. But to speed adoption of new product types, or market segments, consumers need to be offered simple, easy-to-understand pathways. Setting light design patterns, in certain instances, encourages this. Just imagine what a mess we'd be in if every car had a different type of fuel filler, and every fuel station a different size of nozzle, and you can see what I mean...
Image: Svanes on flickr under creative commons license
Posted by Joseph Simpson on 16th February 2009
Hey Joe
What'd be really cool is if mobile phone manufacturers decided to standardise on USB as the charging cable of choice - the standard is already out there and everyone already has a USB cable.
Sell phones without USB charging cables ('cos most people have them already) and sell USB cables only to those few who need them.
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Posted by: Joannah | March 19, 2009 at 05:35 AM
You'd think this would be a no brainer but at least it's something they are looking at doing. I am hopeful.
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