Standards

I have become a big fan of standards lately. Over the years we have reviewed dozens of cell phones and always hated the fact that every maker seemed to have a different charger. Our testing lab is littered with strange chargers that no one seems to be able to match up with a device.

In the past month or so we've received 5 new communications devices, you certainly can't call them phones any more, and they all take exactly the same power connectors. There is a miniUSB connector on the device and one end of the connecting cable. The other end of the cable is a standard USB connector. The wall plug is just a 110v to USB power connector. We can use any device with any cable and either the wall plug or a laptop USB port!! Hallelujah!!

We cannot praise ALL of the device makers who've sent us phones lately, Sanyo, HTC and Samsung, for going with a standard.

Now if we can only get camera makers to do the same thing!!