Universal charger

I never think we will ever get a universal charging platform other than what we have right now with the micro USB other than Apple.  I remember when all these tech was coming out is was a mess but it has cleaned up now.  The problem i see right now, is that every device has a different size battery pack (mAHr) and until you get every device to have the same battery pack, then we can all have the same charger.  I even seen devices have the same battery pack, and the two different company had different rated chargers!  How fast you charge a battery will always be a at the engineer design philosophy and will vary engineer to engineer.  When i design my charging system i charge it at the lowest charge rate as I can as i want to preserve the life of the battery.  Also, usb computer connections are already standardized  across all platforms as the max charge current is 500mA no matter what we plug in.  One thing i love about Li-ion batteries is that all the brains are contained inside the module.  This is due to how toxic Li can be, and thus it contains a temp sensor, battery charge level indicator,  a over charge protection shut off relay, etc...  If building a smart charger for Nicads, the user has the build all these ckt but not so much with Li-ion battery!  Anyways consider that we already have a universal charger right now!

Hi Eric et al,

Actually the latest USB battery charging spec allows a range of currents up to 1.8 A to be supported. This means that USB very well placed to become the universal charging interface in future electronic designs. The EU has already made it mandatory for all new smartphone models to include a USB port for charging as well as data purposes. FTDI, one of Element 14 franchised manufacturing partners, has written extensively on this subject. Here is an example if you are interested - http://electronicdesign.com/article/power/usb-spec-improves-charging-portable-devices-73831 

Hi Eric et al,

Actually the latest USB battery charging spec allows a range of currents up to 1.8 A to be supported. This means that USB very well placed to become the universal charging interface in future electronic designs. The EU has already made it mandatory for all new smartphone models to include a USB port for charging as well as data purposes. FTDI, one of Element 14 franchised manufacturing partners, has written extensively on this subject. Here is an example if you are interested - http://electronicdesign.com/article/power/usb-spec-improves-charging-portable-devices-73831