An end to mobile charger mayhem

I'm sure I am not the only one that's resisted changing my mobile at times because of the horror of having to upgrade car chargers, travel-weight chargers, over and above the one that comes in the box. Thank goodness something is finally being done about it the un-necessary chaos.

Life would be so much simpler if wherever you went you could charge your phone, rather than the cry of help that goes out around the office as someone faces battery death and severance from the 24/7 connectivity we've all come to rely on. Anyone got a Nokia charger? The little pin or the old bigger pin one? iPhone? Samsung? BlackBerry? Sony Ericsson? HTC? The list and the variables are seemingly endless. The un-necessary toll on the environment (and cupboard space) makes me wonder how it's taken so long for us to reach agreement that the situation is bonkers.

So hurrah for Apple,LG,Motorola, Nokia, Research In Motion (BlackBerry), Samsung, and Sony Ericsson amongst others who've signed up to working to a universal micro USB mobile charger format by 2010 (for Europe at least).

Could someone sort out laptops, digital cameras and iPod's next!? Surely a universal standard would make an enormous amount of sense environmentally, economically and certainly in terms of the plug spaghetti at home.

In eco-terms we should all be taking the solar charge option much more seriously! Even for those of us that live in less sunny climes there's more than enough light everyday to trickle charge many gadgets from your windowsill.