"Larry" <noone@home.com> wrote in message
news:Xns9A88544A43308noonehomecom@208.49.80.253...

> What pisses me off is the cheapskate bastards eliminated the CONVENIENT,
> EASY-TO-USE, drop in chargers we had on the old flipphones. It gave you a
> place to "hang" your phone on your desk or beside your bed so it didn't
> get
> shoved off onto the floor, or worse.....it automatically recharged your
> battery WITHOUT you having to fight some damned little USB connector you
> can hardly see that MUST be plugged in a certain way, which is really
> stupid.

Six of one, half-dozen of the other- while I too miss the convenient drop in
stands, I'm jazzed by the ubiquity of mini-USB as a charging (and
connection) "standard."

When traveling, I can take one charger (an AC charger with a built-in 22mAH
battery pack and two USB output ports) and a pair of USB to mini-USB cables
to handle two phones, two bluetooth headsets, a BT GPS, two kiddie MP3/MP4
media players, and even my wife's keychain digital picture frame! By
carrying the appropriate charge/sync cables, the same AC "wallbrick" also
handles my Zunes, an iPod, my backup prepaid phone (a Verizon WinMo phone on
PagePlus for where my T-Mo service is spotty), my old PDAs, etc. With the
charger's included battery pack, I have emergency charging power on
airplanes if the Zunes and media players can't handle a long flight without
a little help.

Mini-USB as REALLY cut down the size of my electronics "travel support kit."
It's worth the trade off of losing the drop-in chargers of the past.

> If you got longwinded, you simply
> swapped the easy-to-swap battery pack, which was the back of the phone.
> You didn't have to dig around inside some slick, shiny girly case, fight
> the damned battery hold down gadget to pry it out without a pry bar, then
> replace it all, a real PITA on any new phone, now.

Yeah, but that has advantages as well- I had three completely different
models of Nokia phones with entirely different form factors that all used
the same "take off the cover and replace it" battery, which by coincidence
also was the same battery used by my first BT GPS module (may it rest in
peace.) I never had to carry the stupid proprietary charger for that GPS- I
just swapped the battery with my phone's when the GPS ran down, and charged
the low battery in the phone.

Now my new GPS has a proprietary battery, but a "standard" charger- such is
progress, I guess!


> No, press the button,
> slide the whole back off the phone and slide another one on and you were
> ready-to-go.

Again, advantages and disadvantages- it was very rare that those molded case
batteries worked in any other phone, unless the new model was styled just
like the old (i.e. Nokia 5120, 6120, 5160, 6160, etc. or the various Moto
MicroTACs, etc.)

> God I HATE USB charging!

Again, one charger for "everything" has certain conveniences!