ITU approved the use of common billing solution for mobile devices, micro-USB connector
If you are staying in Europe countries and have frequently changing your mobile device causing inconvenience due to incompatible charger types after upgrade, then the standardization of charging solution approval from ITU (International Telecommunication Union) may cheer you up. Just recently, ITU has approved a new UCS (Universal Charging Solution) that will standardize all the charger types for all mobile devices regardless of manufacturers to reduce the wastage as part of greener environment initiative.
The standardized charging type will be based on Micro USB connector that has been widely used in existing mobile devices and this could make the adoption effort much simpler without the need to redesign a new form factor for it. While no detailed technical specification being released yet, the new charging standard is claimed to be much more energy efficient that will able to benefit all users, shortening the charging time while reducing the electricity bills in long run. More importantly, it will able to reduce the incompatibility of old chargers that ended up in the trash. Some mobile phone manufactures such as Nokia, Sony Ericsson has already working on this newly defined solution and since most of the mobile manufacturers have already agreed on the new charging unit standardization, it is expected to see other mobile phone makers from other geographic such as Motorola, Samsung and LG to adopt this soon.
You may want to start thinking on what types of mobile phones you want to get in order to be able to utilize when the new Universal Charging Solution is available earliest by 2010.