Ringtone Producer

After years of struggling with an ancient (vintage?) Nokia the size of a brick which only had about five different polyphonic ringtones, I’ve recently been lucky enough to inherit a fancy smart phone from a benevolent relative.

Unfortunately, my old Nokia’s charger was not compatible with it, and I had to spend almost as much as I would have on a new basic phone to buy a new, special charger. NOT that I’m complaining, understand! Because even though the charger was undoubtedly pricy, considering that it was the only expense I had to incur for the smart phone, it was still a massive bargain!

Even so, I was rather elated to hear today’s announcement from the GSMA mobile phone industry association about an agreement between 17 mobile phone operators and major handset makers and their plans to have standardised, universal chargers for all the major cellphones by 2012.

This will mean that all future cellphone chargers should be interchangeable, so you would be able to use any other phone’s charger to charge your particular phone.

Apart from the obvious convenience it would give all of us – such as being able to charge your own phone with anyone else’s charger – it will also be good for the environment.

According to the GSMA, having universal chargers will help to reduce greenhouse gases from manufacturing and transporting replacement chargers of 13.6 to 21.8 million tons a year. Cast-off chargers currently generate more than 51 000 tons of waste a year! That sounds amazing to believe until one considers these statistics released following a French study which found that, every 20 months, between 48 million and 51 million cellphone chargers become obsolete!

“The mobile industry has a pivotal role to play in tackling environmental issues and this programme is an important step that could lead to huge savings in resources, not to mention convenience for consumers,” said Rob Conway, CEO and board member of the GSMA. “There is enormous potential in mobile to help people live and work in an eco-friendly way and with the backing of some of the biggest names in the industry, this initiative will lead the way.”

Among the initial group of cellular companies who have joined GSMA’s initiative are: 3 Group, AT&T, KTF, LG, mobilkom austria, Motorola, Nokia, Orange, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, Telenor, Telstra, T-Mobile and Vodafone.

The standardised chargers will have a shared USB interface and also meet higher energy efficiency targets, with up to 50 percent energy savings.

But one doesn’t have to wait until the arrival of the universal chargers in order to make a difference to the environment. Chargers can be power-sucking vampires, so when not in use to charge your cellphone, it should be unplugged. Nokia has recently released phones that beep when they are charged, as a reminder to unplug the charger.

And now I’m off to, for the first time in my life, download some cool mp3 ringtones on my fancy smart phone!