The major mobile phone manufacturer’s  have agreed upon a universal phone charger to cut costs for consumer and to reduce the amount of waste the industry creates.  The new standard is going to be the micro-USB standard which many other small portable devices already use.

Currently cell phones use a myriad of different connectors for for their charging ports which means that every single phone has to come with a new charger and data cable.  So even though many new phones are already using the micro-USB you still get a new charger every time you get a new phone.

If all phone chargers and data ports were the same manufacturers could reasonably sell chargers and sync cables separately, greatly reducing the amount of consumption necessary to create redundant chargers and reducing the amount of waste created by obsolete chargers.

But wait there’s more… the manufacturers are going to start producing more energy efficient chargers as well.  I haven’t found any detailed specs yet, but Bloomberg reports:

“The new chargers will use 50 percent less energy and cut the number made each year by half, lowering greenhouse gases from making and transporting them by 13.6 million tonnes to 21.8 million tonnes.”

It would be nice to see them put out a charger that completely eliminates vampire power drain.  Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

Sources: Yahoo Tech & Bloomberg