© mightyohm



You know the feeling: You're out of town, at a conference or even on vacation, but you're waiting for that one important call. You keep your phone on and near you at all times. Then that little beeping noise starts, alerting you to the inevitable death of your mobile battery. At first you ignore it, you've got plenty of juice left. But in the end, you know you're going to have to plug it in, if you want to last the weekend. So you head back to your hotel room and start digging through your suitcase. You know you packed it. You know you've got the charger somewhere!

Alas, you have forgotten the most important item besides clean underwear. You are without a phone charger. Of course, you immediately start thinking of other options. Who can you borrow a charger from? You start to ask your buddies you came with, your wife, your kids, even the bellboy, but no one has the same make and model cell phone that you do. Sure they have a blackberry, but the upgraded kind, your kids have iPhones and your wife has a Nokia her work gave her. The bellboy has a Sidekick which you've never even heard of before.

The only thing left to do is call your office and let them know your phone will be dead the rest of your trip, please get in touch with you through the hotel.

Its been one of the biggest frustrations of cell phone users for years: no charger adapter. And why would any cell phone company want to create one? If you lose your charger you have to buy a new one, and they can price it however they want to because you NEED it.

Fortunately, the European Union has (forced, ahem, I mean) struck a deal with industry leaders to create a universal charger compatible with USB ports. CNN says it will be ready to go into production in January, 2010. CNN also speculates that the rest of the world will not lag far behind, good news for us non-Europeans.

What do you think of the universal charger idea? Good? Bad? Indifferent?