What do you think of the new legislation that all phone chargers will be the same by 2012?

Great idea!! That means that you wont have to buy a new car charger, spare charger ect... when you get a new phone. And if you don't have the same phone as someone else at least you can still use their charger if you forgot yours instead of being s.o.l.

If the apocalypse hasn't killed us all, we'll be in a much more convenient world. ;)

Hotels won't have those stacks of chargers available anymore to riffle through and find one like the one you forgot somewhere else. I guess they will just have a plug in the wall.

Wouldn't that be awesome. I must have about 10 or 15 chargers from old cellphones lying around.

It will make things easier but companies should have the right to build the product they want to make.

That'll be convenient. Such standards are one of the few legitimate purposes of gov't regulation.

No legislation. No laws. This is a voluntary effort by the cellphone companies. Read the article.

Standards like this are two-edged swords. It's nice that everyone uses the same connection, but this stymies any progress on making new and improved charger interfaces. Different types of batteries need different voltages and charging profiles. Now they are stuck with only one voltage and charging profile, making it difficult for companies to try new battery technologies. And it is limited to a USB connection, which rules out new and better connection possibilities.

But this is a problem with standardizing any sort of technology: figuring out when the innovation curve has sufficiently flattened out before standardizing stuff.

I have problems with losing my charger, and my Voyager (from 2008) uses a different charger than my parents' enV phones. The chargers cost $40 to replace. So, the law is great AND long overdue!

Its smart, they should do it. While they are at it they should make anything connectable to a computer able to connect via the same sized USB port.