The European Union (EU) plans to force smartphone brands to use a single common standard charger after the move was approved by the parliament.
EU has been pushing the universal charging standard since last year. Members of the European Parliament’s Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection accepts the position last Wednesday with 43 favor votes versus 2 against. It also got support from the main political groups of the parliament.
The EU wants to mandate brands to use USB Type-C on all of their smartphones to help lessen waste, make phones interoperable, and help promote consumer competition.
They also wanted to push the European Commission to have a common interoperability standard for wireless charging — a technology that’s starting to become available on more devices.
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If implemented, even budget phones may have to upgrade to USB Type-C from microUSB.
But what we’re really interested to see is how Apple will address these changes. If you remember, Apple decided to remove the chargers on its newer iPhones to apparently help save the planet.
However, it’s been recently discovered that Apple actually saved EUR5 billion as they didn’t drop the price to compensate for the omitted accessories. If cutting waste is really a top priority, then ditching their proprietary Lightning port and cables should be easy.
Apart from smartphones, the EU also wants to standardize the use of USB Type-C on tablets, cameras, handheld consoles, laptops, and others.
The 705 members of the parliament are expected to approve the plan in full at next month’s plenary session. This is said to be just for formality purposes as it already has strong support from different political groups.
Via: Independent