An excellent move. Imagine all the power sockets in your house required a different plug. Be a nightmare.
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Plus I would expect that these manufacturers move from the plethora of USB mini/micro/macro options when all mobile devices use USB C.
I can’t see sticking with a mini connection on your bike lights when your phone and GPS charge from USB C as a good selling point.
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buy aapl puts!
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But does it need to be government mandated is the question……no one doubts the convenience.
If you only want to use USB-C, then just buy devices that support it. Governments don’t need to make it mandatory, IMO.
And I am 100% on the “make everything USB-C” bandwagon….but let me make the choice.
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More than likely it does. Without this (and the previous EU charger mandate) we’d still have a multiplicity of charging devices and cables none of which were interoperable. All those chargers were varying voltages and current: 12V, 1A; 6V, 1.5A; etc. Even if the device end connectors were the same (they often were standard jack plugs) you had to check the charger and device to make sure they were compatible. Oh, and some were different polarity! FFS! At least USB is standard 6V & 0.5A so you can’t fry a device.
Having a government/Economic Block mandate simply speeds things along and gets us where we should have been in the first place. It’s actually a more effective way than consumer “choice”, it’s a big boy saying to manufacturers “If you want to sell in our market place you play by our rules” rather than a series of lone voices saying “I don’t want that”.
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I sit corrected. 
I would argue that is because standards have constantly been changing, not because of market pressure.
As noted above, who now gets to decide what standard is “better” and should become the universal method? What does that process look like?
Again…I love USB-C and I look forward to the now-imminent demise of USB-Micro (which was total 
), but I don’t see the need for government mandates here.
But we are getting way off-topic, so I’m just gonna bow out.
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I wondered why DCR laboured the need for Garmin to do it, now I know why 
A lot of my micro USB have failed at some point not being robust enough and a few of my garmins have too.
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One of the things I have with my Garmin Oregon (uses mini-B connector) is an “Angle Up” lead. (https://www.amazon.co.uk/StarTech-com-Mini-USB-Cable-Cord-Black/dp/B00FSVHXQU) This puts much less strain on the PCB to USB port soldering and causes less flex around the casing. It’s still not “waterproof” but it’s as good as you are likely to get without actually sealing in the cable. The Oregon uses AA batteries and the USB port sits at the base of the battery cover so there’s an extra chance of knocking a normal connector if you remove it.
The market clearly didn’t get it done, not least because there wasn’t an incentive for individual companies to standardize. So the EU acted on behalf of its citizens, forcing change in their interests.
You can’t solve most societal problems by just modifying the behavior of our individuals. Nor do companies act in the interests of society, there is often no incentive to do so. Government — as a representative of the people — can play this role.
The actions and decisions of the EU and other governments have often spilled over and caused changes with seemingly no government intervention. In the past Californian emission standards forced car companies to take emissions seriously. Rather than produce Californian cars, everyone got to reap the benefits.
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This is a wake-up call to the thech companies that have reined freely and created monopolies traps for consumers.
The discussion about charging standardisation is not new and plenty of companies converged in free will.
EU is doing more than this. Appliances need to be easely and cheaply repaired insted of just buying a new one… etc… etc…
Brave it would be to stop the BS that every year a new iteration of a device is released without much merit. This is done only to make your 1yo device obsolete.
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Aaaand we’re out. (UK)
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Does it matter, though? I doubt Apple and others will make a special UK version with a non-standard cable, just like California set the emission standards for the entire US.
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We shall see.
While the rest of the world gets it’s shit together, we will just let companies dump any old shite on us. Is the message to business 
if not the brexit voters 
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Not to stray too far off topic but they actually don’t. It’s quite common for there to be a carb/northeast emissions vehicle and rest of country at least in the German stuff I deal with. About a dozen states at this point have adopted carb standards and get carb cars ( most in the Northeast) but then you get weird outliers where lots of northeast people buy cars in Florida so it’s not uncommon for Florida to randomly get them despite having no emissions tests.
Would not surprise me if there’s and eu and uk version of electronic devices.
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Excellent news, if 10 years too late.
Now I just need to facilitate my departure from this broken island (UK) to the sensible EU.
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A Tesla coil in every home. Just sayin
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Charging cables? What decade are we in?
I look at this like fuel economy/ pollution standards / outlawing of leaded gasoline: clear market failures where the government stepped in to fix a society wide problem that couldn’t be addressed by collective individual decisions. So I’m in the camp cheering this move on.
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