Universal Charger for Phones Planned, Radioshack Execs Weep Openly

Cell phone manufacturers have come together in a broad agreement that will move the industry to a single, energy-saving charger for all future cell phones. After being urged by the European Commission, mobile phone manufacturers such as Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, and LG decided on the micro-USB connector as the common charging interface for their phones by 2012. Previously, each manufacturer had a specific charger for each of their phones, and sometimes for each different model of phone. The elimination of the need for many different types of chargers could potentially erase 51,000 tons of waste.

I would have to say that something like this was right up there with peace in the Middle East on the scale of implausibility. Everyone has become accustomed to the fact that when you buy that shiny new cell phone that you need so fucking bad because your old one only had a 3 megapixel camera (piece of shit!), it comes with a new charger that isn't compatible with the old one you had. Oh! And you have to buy a separate charger for your car because... well because that's what the fucking salesman told you that you need to do. That was business.

And in its own sick and twisted way, it made sense. Every manufacturer came up with their own charger plug that breaks your phone within a year of its purchase. At Radioshack, I learned to match each charging plug to the phone, because god forbid I fill my brain with anything practical. You see, that's really all Radioshack sells anymore. When I worked there, customers were in three categories: The mentally handicapped, people who needed cell phone chargers, and geriatrics who needed hearing aid batteries but can't hear me tell them what their total was. So you see, cell phone chargers were about half of our fucking business, making us the experts.

Here's what I learned: Samsung, Sanyo, and LG had their own easy-to-snap-as-a-toothpick needle plugs. Nokia had a similar, but as always incompatible, plug for their phones. Motorola had a wide plug with plastic clips on the end that broke off the first time you tried to unplug it. Nextel, being a brand of Motorola, had the same wide plug, but with an extra piece of plastic jammed in there, just to fucking be different. Oh, and remember the RAZR? That thing used a mini-USB plug, but not just any mini-USB plug. It was specially designed for the oh-so-shitty RAZR, and not enough were made when they first came out. So now you understand the implications of a universal charger, all this information becomes as useful to my brain as a .45 slug.

So, what does this mean for your average Joe Bumblefuck out there? Nothing really. You're still going to need a new charger for your new phone, because its still going to take 3 fucking years to standardize them. Even then, it's only after you've purchased one of these fancy new universal chargers that you'll never need to buy a new one. And you know what? You'll lose the fucking thing anyway. The system works! Radioshack wins again!