The Daring Dufas wrote:
Rick Brandt wrote:
On Wed, 12 Aug 2009 21:54:16 -0500, The Daring Dufas wrote:
Believe it or not, the manufacturers have actually gotten together to
set a standard for chargers before the government does it for them, that
is everyone except Apple. It looks like it will be the micro USB. It's
something that needed to be done years ago.

I have had one case though where the plugs from two chargers were the
same (they would both fit my phone), but only one would actually
charge it. The other caused the display to read "unrecognized
charger" or something to that affect.

My son had a similar experience with a Garmin gps unit. He was
telling us he couldn't use it while the charger was plugged in (the
charger did charge the battery properly).
My wife and I both told him that it sounded nuts to us that they would
design it to work like that. Turned out he was using a cell-phone
charger with the same plug. When he switched to the charger that came
with the unit everything was fine.

So "compatible plug" != "compatible charger"


Of course it's compatible chargers. What I'd like to see
is the ability of any phone to charge of any USB port on
any equipment.

And with a standard cable, no proprietary cables. You already can pretty
much charge any phone off of a USB port with a non-standard cable sold
by after-market accessory manufacturers. All phones use single cell
li-ion batteries of around 3.7V, and are able to charge at 500mA or less
(the official USB spec on how much current a standard USB port must be
able to supply even though most can supply more).