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by michaelt 2878 days ago 

  I really don't understand what the EU is
  complaining about. I'm not aware of a single
  smartphone that doesn't charge over USB.
You know why that is? Because in 2009, the EU told them to [1].

The fact you're not aware of a single smartphone that doesn't charge over USB is, in fact, a major success for the EU bossing phone manufacturers around!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_external_power_supply
1 comments
sjwright 2878 days ago
That's basically a lie; the industry was already unifying around USB charging because it's so cheap to implement and reduces the part count.

(To the extent the EU did anything right, they correctly predicted the future, which is I suppose fairly impressive.)

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michaelt 2878 days ago
If the market was going to give us USB chargers anyway, why do cheap phones which are excluded from Common EPS rules, like the Samsung E1200, often not use USB chargers?
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sjwright 2877 days ago
So again, they correctly predicted that dirt cheap shit with internal electronics designed more than fifteen years ago will continue to be dirt cheap shit today. Wow, the EU is amazing.

What's their next trick? Banning spinning hard disks from laptops? Forcing all consumer grade digital cameras to use SD cards?

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