At the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, this week, 17 leading mobile companies came together to adopt a “Universal Charging Solution” (UCS) by 2012, using micro USB as the charging interface. The list of 17 members includes GSMA members such as 3 Group, AT&T, KTF, LG, mobilkom austria, Motorola, Nokia, Orange, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telenor, Telstra, T-Mobile, and Vodafone.

Furthermore, this initiative will also try to reduce standby energy consumption and the production of duplicate phone chargers. This solution will be adopted by January 1, 2012. Nowadays, many phones come with a proprietary charger that can only be used with that specific unit, and this means multi-mobile phone homes and offices need a different charger for each unit.

With a universal charging standard, anyone can use a single charger to charge multiple phones, and fewer users will need a new charger when acquiring a new phone. They will just have to use the charger they already have from a previous unit. According to the GSM Association estimates, there will be 50-percent fewer chargers manufactured, which practically represents a potential elimination of up to 51,000 tons of duplicate chargers.

Another advantage of this idea is that the industry can expect to reduce greenhouse gases in manufacturing and transporting replacement chargers by 13.6 to 21.8 million tons a year. How will this revolutionary charger work? Well, it will use a micro USB connection as the charging interface. This way, mobile phones would also be charged from the USB port of a computer.