Category: Network hardware design

Mobile Industry Unites to Drive Universal Charging Solution for Mobile Phones ~ GSM World

My comments on this standard

This will hopefully eliminate the clutter of mobile phone chargers that exist in most households and the worry concerning lost mobile phone chargers leading to mobile-phone downtime.

The standard can also allow a self-powered USB hub to be re-purposed as a “charging bar”, which would be a boon to the food, beverage and hospitality industry as well as householders. I had heard mention during ABC 774 Melbourne’s coverage of the Victorian bushfire crisis of a pub which was being used as a relief centre having its tables covered with phone chargers. This setup, like most homes and offices, would have one or more powerboards with three or four chargers plugged in to each powerboard. The different chargers would only be able to fit particular phones. A self-powered USB hub working as a charging bar would be able to service 4-7 phones from one power outlet. That would be enough to cover all the phones used by people sitting or standing around an average dining or bar table used in most cafes, bars and similar places. Larger tables like picnic benches, banquet tables or standard tables pushed together can be catered for with a few 4-7 port hubs powered from one standard powerboard.

This also leads to a smaller physical footprint for charging multiple phones and less need for powerboards for this purpose.

Another problem this will also solve is the common problem caused by two or more “wall-warts” plugged in to a double power outlet or powerboard. Here, you have the “wall-warts” not being able to be close together without one of them falling out or making poor contact with the AC supply, thus leading to erratic operation or damage to the charger, mobile phone or AC supply.

Once this interface standard is implemented on mobile phones, this can encourage other personal-electronics manufacturers to use the same connection for powering or charging devices like VoIP phones, MP3 players or digital cameras.

Another improvement would be to simply design innovative power supply concepts without having to factor in different voltages or plug types in their design. Examples of this could include pocket solar panels for personal-electronics devices or powerboards that have built-in USB hubs for low-voltage power supply to gadgets.

Yet another benefit would be that the same socket on the one device can perform two different functions – power supply and data transfer. This is a bonus not just for end-users but for people designing these devices, because devices like mobile phones have fewer holes to be catered for in their design. In fact, an MP3 player or mobile phone could just have a standard “headset” jack for analogue audio sent to and from headsets and a micro-USB socket for external power and data transfer.

The only company whom I think will keep away from the standard or postpone its implementation would be Apple. This is similar to how they treated UPnP and DLNA standards – if it wasn’t created by them, they are not in a hurry to implement it.

Look forward to fewer chargers and adaptors filling our drawers or cluttering our powerboards!

The typical network-attached storage, electronic picture frame or printer is now equipped with a USB host port, typically for connecting USB flash drives and other similar devices. Even a lot of boomboxes and clock radios which have a dock for an iPod have a USB host port so they can play MP3 files held on a USB flash drive. But what about connecting a USB-attached CD or DVD drive.

This could allow, for example, a typical network-attached storage to work like the RipFactory RipServer and “rip” audio CDs to the hard disk so they can be shared to DLNA-compliant media clients. Similarly, those CDs that we “burn” photos on to for sending to other people or viewing on our JPEG-compatible DVD player can be viewed on an electronic picture frame or select pictures can be printed from these discs using an “all-in-one” printer or the pictures that are on these CDs can be copied on to a network-attached storage so they are available on the home network. Approved DVD-playback software could be installed in an electronic picture frame so that one can turn it in to a personal DVD player by adding an optional DVD-ROM drive. Similarly, an MP3 player that doesn’t have a built-in optical drive could become a CD player once a CD-ROM drive is connected to it. The same holds true for such players that have a built-in optical drive but the optical drive has failed, thus extending the useful lifespan of these devices.

The main problems about this is the ability for these devices to support optical drives as part of the USB Mass-Storage device-class specification. Then there is the issue of providing enough power at the USB socket to support a “single-cord” USB optical drive of the kind sold as an accessory for portable computers like laptops or netbooks. This is because the USB cord in these drives is required to supply power as well as data. The power-supply problem can become more intense with devices such as electronic picture frames that are built to a limited size budget and have to work from internal batteries or an external power supply.

If this is implemented, the idea of an “add-on” optical disk drive for the likes of network-attached storage units, electronic picture frames and “all-in-one” printers that the user can buy at a later date can extend the value of these devices through their working life.