Standard smartphone charger gets tech specs

Two European standardisation bodies have agreed the technical standards for a pan-European smartphone charger.

On Wednesday, the European Commission announced that European standardisation bodies had published a set of harmonised standards for chargers for data-enabled mobile phones.

"I am very happy that the European standardisation bodies have met our request to develop within a short space of time the technical standards necessary for a common mobile phone charger based on the work done by the industry," the European Commission's vice-president for industry and entrepreneurship, Antonio Tajani, said in a statement accompanying the announcement. "The common charger will make life easier for consumers, reduce waste and benefit businesses. It is a true win-win situation."

The European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardisation (CENELEC) and the European Telecommunications Standards Institue (ETSI) released the standards for the smartphone chargers on Wednesday.

The chargers will be based around micro-USB technology. The agreement to create a standard charger was signed in July 2009 and involved 14 major phone manufacturers, including Nokia, Qualcomm and Research in Motion.

The International Telecommunications Union has said that a universal phone charger should be based on Micro-USB.

The European Commission expects the first common chargers and smartphones with the new standards to come to the European market within the first months of 2011.