> I just wish some similar agreement can be reached (in time) with countries outside the EU.
Intercontinental roaming charges are a bad joke (3$ incoming, 5$ out and yes, that's per minute) . What I do is to get a local SIM and communicate the number to those contacts that need it.
Internet (sometimes 20$ per MB and yes, you read that right) is less of a problem due the ubiquity of free WLANs.
Another really excellent thing the EU did is to mandate mini USB as phone chargers. With the noticeable exception of Apple every newer phone can be charged with any newer charger. This used to be a major pet peevee of mine.
I don't know if this still the case, but a while ago i bought an iPhone from UK (after the mini USB mandate), and it came with an adapter to miniUSB in the box. Even Apple had to abide to the new regulation.
As for the roaming charges, I completely agree. Even now, within Europe, it's really bad for data. I've traveled through 10 EU countries in the last 3 months, and had to buy 7 SIM cards, as my home carrier charges 2EUR for 5MB. I was lucky with my 3LikeHome sim card from Austria, which you can use with your home rates in a few other countries.
Yeah but that's an adapter, even though it does abide by the rules you still have to carry the adapter around. Most manufacturers just switched to miniUSB entirely, so you don't need an adapter, any combination of charger and phone should work (in practice there may be issues with undervoltage, I've seen combinations of phones and chargers not work)
micro USB is actually a very poor choice for a charger connection: it is max rated at 2.5W (way too low for an iPhone), it is keyed (you can only plug it in one way) and it is expensive (a whole bunch of pins you don't need). On top of that many people confuse it with mini USB, like you just did.
Micro USB has 4 pins (+/- Data +/- Power, 1 additional pin for host/device determination) Where are the bunches of pins you don't need?
And the power ratings are functionally design minimums so your USB device must work within those boundaries, while most phones and phone chargers can exceed them.
My kindle charger outputs 5 V 1.8 A for a total of 9 watts.
My droid charger outputs 5.1 V 0.75 A for a total of 3.8 watts.
My understanding is that, contrary to GP's comment, the EU didn't 'mandate microUSB'. The original MoU required the manufacturers[1] to get together to decide on a common external power supply "to allow for full compatibility and safety of chargers and mobile phones". So while officially CENELEC decided the standard, in practice they were never going to not adopt the manufacturers' recommendation, which was microUSB.
As for amount of power, I believe the USB power delivery spec allows 5V devices to draw up to 10W of power (5V at 2A) - though it's fairly new (2012), so I don't know how widely used it is yet.
Yes, the EU only mandated that the industry choose a common standard so they picked the cheapest of all the options they had. With the newer spec you can indeed draw more power but it requires hardware negotiation to prevent older devices catching on fire. Some of the other options on the table at the time were much more elegant and extensible to, for example, household appliances (USB is not allowed for use in the bathroom or kitchen). The other options were a few cents per connector more expensive so they never had a chance when the EU decided to leave it to the industry.
> sometimes 20$ per MB and yes, you read that right
I can confirm, just checked my data roaming rate (from the EU), it's 0.15€/MB for European (not just EU, also Switzerland, Norway or Iceland) roaming (which is already crazy expensive, my in-country plan is 0.0075€/MB even ignoring that it also provides voice and SMS); 0.30€/MB from the US and 13.00€/MB from just about everywhere else
Intercontinental roaming charges are a bad joke (3$ incoming, 5$ out and yes, that's per minute) . What I do is to get a local SIM and communicate the number to those contacts that need it.
Internet (sometimes 20$ per MB and yes, you read that right) is less of a problem due the ubiquity of free WLANs.
Another really excellent thing the EU did is to mandate mini USB as phone chargers. With the noticeable exception of Apple every newer phone can be charged with any newer charger. This used to be a major pet peevee of mine.