India sets USB-C charging deadline for smartphones Smartphones and other mobile devices sold in India must have a USB-C charging port as standard by March 2025. That's three months after a similar deadline set by Europe: in October, the EU decided to require USB-C charging ports in all phones, tablets, and cameras sold in the European Economic Community from the end of 2024. …
Not only is the UK getting this whether it wanted it or not. It has had zero say in the entire process. In fact I am guessing that thanks to the idiotic Brexit bill, it will actually cost the UK, as it will need to go through a process to make sure it's suitable for UK sold kit (the UK doesn't automatically recognize EU marks since Brexit).
This really is the examplar of braindead.
USB-C will be transmogrified by the Brexit Opportunities Unit to be called BBB for the UK market, and will introduce a raft of paperwork that must be completed before these devices can be sold in the UK.
USB - Universal Serial Bus
BBB - Boris' Brexit Bus
Yes, life was so much easier for them when a faceless foreign bureaucrat did their thinking for them. It was easier to accept when there's no protesting orders too. Yes, it's going to be a tough few years, and the EU did what they could to make it tougher*, but in the end I'm confident the British will come out of Brexit much better off than they were.
* If Britain succeeds post-EU other members will leave and take their money with them.
YOu had no clue how EU was set-up or working, There was no faceless bureaucrat deciding. Each country has its representatives. True, in the case of UK was Nigel Farage between them so, of course, had no clue or say in what was done in brussels, except collecting the nice pay that goes along being a EU parliamentary.
" in the end I'm confident the British will come out of Brexit much better off than they were."
You're probably right. The Dutch and even the Belgians are seriously examining the possibility of getting out of the ridiculous EU - in both instances, membership costs them a lot of money. It's all expense for little or no return.
If Duxit and Bexit are true, then that's bad news for England.
The EU president publicly stated that at all costs, it must be the case that being outside the EU is worse than being inside. That could mean them hardening their attitude to England, further increasing our transaction costs and no prospect of resolving the Northern Ireland Protocol to disincentivise the Dutch and Belgians.
But then, that's exactly Westminster's attitude to Scottish independence. So ho hum...
@Paul Uszak
"The EU president publicly stated that at all costs, it must be the case that being outside the EU is worse than being inside."
That is the difficulty the EU faces when it comes to falling apart every time a member leaves or threatens the idea, especially for a net contributing member. But the tighter they grip the less desirable it becomes.
"That could mean them hardening their attitude to England, further increasing our transaction costs and no prospect of resolving the Northern Ireland Protocol to disincentivise the Dutch and Belgians."
The NI issue is a very simple issue the UK has the leverage over. Turning the screws on the UK would give us less reason to be nice (too nice in my opinion) over Ireland. It would add another threat to the EU's existence so wouldnt be a good idea to push their luck.
"But then, that's exactly Westminster's attitude to Scottish independence. So ho hum..."
Embarrassingly the Scot independence relied on the UK propping them up while they screw themselves in hopes of joining the EU/Euro. If they want independence it should be just that. Good luck.
The biggest problem with Scottish independence from the point of view of the rest of the UK (or the rest of the West) is that it will deprive NATO of a strategically important position of controlling the eastern side of the GIUK gap.
That is why Russia tried to influence the 2014 referendum.
The people who think Brexit was about racism are mostly white remainers.
The UK is the least racist EU country - and one consequence of Brexit was removing most of the non-white MEPs.
A rejoiner friend posted pictures of the rejoin march on FB last year, and even he commented that it was middle class and middle aged and compared it to being in Waitrose.
The pictures also showed a sea of white faces - in London!
You are entirely right that it is bizzare that the people who want more immigration from non-white countries are somehow the racists. Everything about the politics of Brexit is bizzare - in the 70s it was the left who wanted to leave, and people like Thatcher campaigned to be in, whereas now the sides have flipped round (apart from the handful of socialists still in the Labour party).
I am a British Asia Brexiter.
@Yet Another Anonymous coward
"for the promoters it was also about lowering standards"
That is to a point true. As the stupidity of the bendy banana law demonstrated that selling the 'wrong' curvature would be really stupid to consider a criminal offense. Standards for standards sake, or worse to lock out competition, are a bad thing. Or worse when it adversely affects health such as the regulation on vapes designed to stop them from being so effective.
Sure, but you're missing the point. Labelling a population of millions of people, of whose motivations one cannot know in entirety and will certainly include many non-racist reasons, as racists (or in this case, racist scum), is an act of group-based discrimination in exactly the same manner as racism or other biases.
To amend your analogy, in the same way a Pole doesn't choose to be Polish, a non-racist Brexit voter *didn't choose that other Brexit voters may be racist*
The EU is primarily designed to privilege white Christians over any other global migrants, or indeed over any British citizens who happen to have the wrong colour skin in the opinion of the EU.
I come from a variety of ethnic backgrounds myself, including Congolese and Persian Jew (yes, we exist) but strangely enough the 5% of me with ancestry in Warsaw is not the bit that finds itself discriminated against within the EU.
The areas of the UK that are 80+% ethnically diverse, such as Bradford and Tower Hamlets, voted Brexit overwhelmingly. Still the Remain response is “there, there petal. You don’t need to speak for yourselves. We’ll tell you who is racist. You’re too uneducated to understand what’s in your best interest”.
So Remain redefined the category of racial discrimination to be all about migrants…who by a miracle of circular EU logic are a whites-only club.
The rest of the world isn’t fooled. We see the difference between the way you treated Syrian refugees, and Ukrainian refugees. You are gaslighting.
Non-white UK citizens can decide for ourselves what is racial discrimination, who is doing it, and speak out for ourselves. Your permission is not required.
I agree with the white bit, but not Christians.
Its very much the white bit: white atheists are fine (in fact preferred over Christians who might encourage odd ideas about "the camel through eye of the needle" or "sheep and goats"). While white Jews do face vile racism sometimes, it is not part of the EU project to encourage this (although it is part of some common European identity movements, which goes back decades).
I did not know about how strong the non-white vote for Brexit was. I Googled (actually "Braved" ?) to check and found this analysis by an academic.
The problem is that if we think for our inferior selves, how can the white saviours be sure us poor darkies supposed to know what we should think.
Right. But that would be the case whether they had USB-C or any other type of charging port.
There are many, many problems with brexit but in this case being outside of the EU gives us a slight (theoretical) advantage. When the EU makes a good decision (such as mandating USB-C charging) the UK will also benefit. Electronics manufacturers (even Apple) appreciate that USB-C is good enough so will almost certainly implement the rule worldwide. Where the EU makes a bad decision (imagine they'd mandated mini USB charging) electronics manufacturers would likely implement a hobbled EU only version and keep the UK and ROTW as it was. If/when something superior to USB-C comes along manufacturers can implement it in the US and UK whereas the EU is likely to drag their feet in changing their law. Standards are great only so long as the 'correct' one is chosen.
Not really, because future changes in standards is already embedded in the EU mandate on USB-C charging. It's actually one of the better examples of a good standard with future proofing and poor example of the "slow bureaucracy" so often exhibited by government of all types.
Except that the EU standard would have to be supremely bad for manufacturers to even consider making devices in two such different formats.UK would still end up with a shit standard, and would have no way of stopping it from happening in the first place.
But *why* has India chosen USB-C ? Astrology ?
The fact the EU has bitten the bullet (something the UK is economically *and* politically incapable of due to it's size and electoral system) means others have to follow.
As an aside, you can also bet your bottom dollar that India has learned from this and is next in the queue to impose a standard when it suits it.
Meanwhile, all the UK can do is say "we would have thought of that eventually".
This may seem childish and sour grapes - especially if you are part of the 99% of the rest of the world who if you ever had an interest in Brexit simply gave up as it makes no fucking sense. However if you are an inmate of the UK, it's actually quite a big deal. We have lost any influence we had on one of the worlds biggest standards setters. Now if they say jump, we can only pout and pretend measuring in inches counts as "control". And since none of the international couriers we use have rushed to implement ounces and pounds, it's pretty clear who is the tail and who is the dog here.
Quote
" We have lost any influence we had on one of the worlds biggest standards setters."
It may not occur to you, but we still export stuff to the rest of the world. and we have to make the damn stuff to the standard that country wants and dont have any say in what that standard is.... One of our customers exports to the US and has a line for that express purpose.
In fact sometimes he complains that its more difficult sending stuff to france than it is to the US, even though the stuff he makes has been made to the same french or US standards for the past 15 yrs.
iPhones now has two kinds of ports : Lightning and USBC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_(connector)#:~:text=The%20Lightning%20connector%20is%20used,battery%20chargers%2C%20and%20other%20peripherals.
Lightning is Apple's own property which is reason enough it could NOT be imposed as a universal standard.
Still, since the UK is NOT imposing USBC, instead Apple will obviously provide UK iPhones with Lightning ports so the UK is ahead of the EU technically. Another Brexit triumph.
The irony is Apple initiated USB-C development and are last to adopt it for their phones. They lead the development of USB-C at the time the EU started calling for all phones to standardise on USB. This whole standardising on one port initiative has been bubbling away for years now. Apple were clearly worried they would be forced to implement a sub-standard connector type and, having thought through the logistical implications, understood they would need to be consistent across their customer base worldwide, so IMO, initiated the USB-C development. One of their key requirements (which is actually quite right) is that the connector can be inserted either way up. Small edge cases, like when you are falling asleep and remember you need to plug in and scramble for the cord with your eyes half open, are actually, because of the annoyance factor, disproportionately important in human factors terms. One thing that can be said for Apple is that they understand this. Lightening, as non standard as it is, is even better in this regard, because you can more easily insert the plug blind to the exact location of the port, so USB-C has always been a slight step down in that regard (but only in that regard).
Of course Apple make a lot of money from the matched charging accessories, but I think they may have moved to USB-C about the time they launched it on the Mac because the whole ecosystem became a bit of a pain. I think the main inhibitor, money aside, was that the EU threat occurred just after they had already forced their customers to complete an expensive transition to using the lightening port. They were still getting a lot of bad press over that and customers were still annoyed. Changing again so soon would have been a problem. If the timing had been better I suspect they would have gone for USB-C across the whole ecosystem from the outset.
Partially I think the initiative was designed to stall the EU - it was a concrete example of Apple’s claim mandating connectors stifles innovation. By initiating a “better” standard and leading it’s adoption by the industry, legislators were given pause to consider if it would have been right to “pick a winner” from the older designs. It succeeded in doing that I think. Partially also it provided a back up uptight for if Apple did have its hand forced - and it did that also. But until now, it’s hand hasn’t been forced, so they stuck with lightening and minting the money from own brand and licensed lightening accessories.
because of the annoyance factor, disproportionately important in human factors terms. One thing that can be said for Apple is that they understand this.
At the time the first iPhone came out, the reason I did not buy one was because it was not possible to turn off animation effects in the UI. A big annoyance factor for me
Everyone is so busy arguing about Brexit (including myself) that we seem to be missing the technology issue - is it a good idea?
In the short term, I think it is, on balance. There is a problem that there may be some devices not suited to USBC charging. Is it really the best option for a gaming laptop for example?
In the long term its going to make it much harder to introduce new (and hopefully better) charging. It will not be practicable to manufacture a mobile device with non-USB charging until you can persuade all the major markets that end up adopting this rule to change it. This will take time, and it will impossible for smaller manufacturers (who tend to be more innovative - otherwise they cannot survive) to do it.
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