O2 launches universal, enviromental phone charger

This is the ‘Universal Charger’, which O2 will be selling in its high street shops. It kills two birds with one stone – firstly the annoyance of trying to find the right charger on some dodgy market stall if you happen to lose yours, and secondly, the annoyance of not being able to charge your phone in someone else’s house.

O2’s also touting the energy-efficient nature of the device. It consumes 70 percent less power than a standard mobile phone charger, and meets the strict energy efficient guidelines of the US Energy Star rating system. If every single phone in use in the UK was charged with one of these, it would save the country nearly £31.4 million, and cut the carbon emissions of the equivalent of 36,000 cars.

The charger accomplishes this by detecting when the battery on the phone is full, and reducing the charge delivered to the handset. They’ve also ‘eliminated’ heat loss from the charger, though the science graduate in me suspects that they might not actually mean ‘eliminated’, just ‘reduced’.

The O2 Universal Charger is currently compatible with Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson devices and will be compatible with BlackBerry and iPhone in early 2009. By that, I assume they mean that they’ll be bundling more leads with it then. It costs £14.99, but if you’re buying an O2 handset before the end of the year, then you’ll get it half price. Extra leads cost £4.99.

There’s some pictures of the charger and the swappable leads here.

O2 Universal Phone Charger (via O2UkOfficial Twitter)

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