Europe leading the charge – Micro-USB to be the standard phone charging port

I applaud our friends overseas in Europe for undertaking the massive amount of babysitting and back rubbing that it takes to get manufacturers of all walks of life to sit down and come to an agreement on a standardized phone charging port. Heck, even getting a few manufacturers to come together at all is no small feat. The players involve Nokia, Sony Ericsson, LG, NEC, Qualcomm, Motorola, RIM, Samsung, Texas Instruments, and Apple. While no specific date is other than “soon”, at least European consumers can find comfort in knowing that they will soon be able to easily swap chargers between friends and their phones like nobodies business.

What’s even more suprising and interesting is the fact that Apple has signed on board. Of course, with all of the paying “certified” Apple provided accessories that live and die by the dock, I don’t see Apple kicking the proprietary dock connector completely to the curb. Instead I see a dock to Micro USB adapter (great one more thing to lose) being included in the box. Although, if it is an adapter, Apple could just as easily (I assume) replace the dock connector with micro USB and have an adapter to take care of that too. Still, no mention of any standardized charging ports for US consumers has been mentioned. We can only hope that this graciousness gets extended to us.

Source: Crunch Gear, Yahoo, Image Source