While I think the "standardized phone charger" idea improves on mine, haven't you noticed that everytime you buy a new phone they make you buy a new car charger, hands free microphone, etc?

I suppose individual OEMs could standardize their chargers and accessories (ie., if you had one Motorola phone you might buy another one), but I'd be surprised if the LGs, Nokia and Sanyos of this world could agree on a standard charger.

I agree that it would be quite difficult to get the different providers to agree on a standard, but look to the PC world - it can be done. How did they get HP, IBM, Dell, and all the other ones to agree on say a standard USB interface, or a standard power cable. Didn't all the 'IBM-compatible' manufactures agree on a few things to make their products more attractive to everyone.

A few cell-phone manufacturers with smaller market shares (i.e., everybody but NOKIA) might want to co-operate and use the standard charger cable to their advantage. If you own a Samsung, and it breaks, you are more likely to buy another compatible device (whether its from Samsung, Motorola,...), but you will be less likely to buy a Nokia - making Nokia lose market-power and economies of scale cost advantages.

Standardized laptop charger

In the PC world, there is a handful of standards groups, mostly centered on Intel and Microsoft, so if they decide something, the rest of the industry goes with it.

With Cell phones, it would be as simple as including an inexpensive coaxial power connector.

Thinking, one could make the charger/handsfree/data connectors a part of the communication standard, such as GSM.

Many phone chargers are usable with other phones. It's a start, I guess.