The European Union will soon bid a fond farewell to a hassle that spares few cell phone user: A dead battery and no suitable power charger.
Starting next year, cell phones will have a one-size-fits-all charger. The uniform model, part of an agreement by at least a dozen cell phone makers, means new phones will no longer comes with chargers, and there will be less electronic waste.
It will also let owners easily borrow someone else's charger when the juice is gone.
"How cool is that?" asked EU spokesman Dennis Abbot on Friday. "This will make a lot of people extremely happy."
He said the uniform charger is the product of an agreement by cell phone makers such as Apple, Emblaze Mobile, Huawei Technologies, LGE, Motorola, NEC, Nokia, Qualcomm, Research in Motion (RIM), Samsung, SonyEricsson, TCT Mobile and Texas Instruments.
The uniform charge will be available for all data-enabled phones, those that can exchange pictures, files, and music with a computer via a USB port. That covers just about all new cell phones models entering the market in 2011, said Abbott.