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by w0utert 4556 days ago
Maybe I'm the one who's missing something here, but why is everyone so obsessed with the Lightning connector Apple uses? As far as I understand it, the proposed legislation is about universal chargers, not universal cables, and isn't intended to promote interoperability between phones from different manufacturers, but to limit the environmental impact of replacing the charger every time you switch phones.

Last time I checked you can plug the USB side of the Lightning connector to any USB charger and vice versa, I'm pretty sure you can use the Apple charger to charge anything that also charges from a USB port. Seems to me that Apple would already be in compliance...
1 comments
simbolit 4556 days ago
sorry to disappoint you, but "charger" in this context means power supply PLUS cable.
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w0utert 4555 days ago
That doesn't make sense, since it would mean manufacturers would not be able to provide any kind of connector on their devices that provides more than just USB and charging, which I cannot imagine to be true.

If an adapter that goes from [whatever port is on the device] to micro-USB would be enough to be compliant with the proposed legislation, Apple is already in compliance, because not only do they sell such an adapter already, the charger end of their Lightning cable also has a standard USB connector (which means it effectively is a Lightning-to-USB adapter itself).

I know the EU already talked about standard chargers for mobile phones even before the iPhone existed, because back then every phone used to have a non-standard charger plus attached, non-removable cable. The whole idea behind the legislation was that the charger got useless the moment you lost or replaced your phone, so lots of them ended up on landfills. Mandating a common charger would allow selling phones without a charger, and re-using old chargers with different phones.

Unless you can quote the exact bits of the proposed rules that say 'any mobile device will have a micro-USB port' (or whatever port would be considered even more 'standard'), I'm going to assume everyone is just getting all worked up about nothing again, because "OMG iPhone does not have micro-USB, make them add it!".

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