The EU parliament has officially voted to push the standardization of mobile device chargers in the EU despite Apple’s protests.
All mobile devices, whether made by Apple, Huawei, or anyone in between needs to have the same charger. Currently it is unclear whether the EU wants to standardize the charger itself and allow different ports on different devices or standardize the port as well. If the EU is standardizing the port, they would most likely be looking at the USB-C to be the standard charger. There is also speculation of the standardization of wireless phone chargers. This is an attempt by the EU to reduce the number of cables in a household and reduce e-waste.This is not the first time the EU attempted standardizing phone chargers. In 2014, the EU passed a rule to make all phones use the micro USB standard. However, Apple found a loophole by making a dongle to convert micro USB to Apple’s proprietary lightning cable.
At that time, Apple’s lightning cable was superior to micro USB by allowing more power through, thus charging phones quicker. Nowadays, the Lightning cable is considered inferior to the much more modern USB-C cables since USB-C allows for quicker data transfer and much higher power delivery.While the standardization of chargers for mobile devices does benefit the environment, it may slow down technological development. The main issue many people have is what happens if a revolutionary charging solution appears for mobile phones, but the EU still forces the use of the standard. Since the EU needs to approve the new charger, it may take many years to implement, thus significantly slowing down technological improvement
The Roar 