http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13970_7-10165603-78.html?tag=mncol
At the end of the story:
UPDATE: One mobile phone maker is conspicuously missing from the GSMA's list of partners: Apple, maker of the popular iPhone. It shouldn't come as a shock that Apple isn't following the rest of the industry on this one, considering that the company has been marching to the beat of its own drummer in mobile from the beginning.
The good news for iPhone users has always been that the connector that's used to recharge the device is the same one used for some Apple iPods. But annoyingly many iPod docking stations and accessories made by third parties for previous generations of iPods don't work with the iPhone.
That quote is from a prior news release, dated February 2009. The follow-up release from June 2009 states that Apple had changed its mind and signed on to the agreement.
Regarding the possibility of maintaining the dock connector as the sole connector on the handset itself, and providing micro USB connectivity via an adaptor: Such a set-up would probably be defined as non-compliant according to the GSMA's specifications.
GSMA says that they will comply with the OMTP CCLDC standard. (See page 5 of their product brief here:
http://www.gsmworld.com/documents/Universal_Charging_Solution_Explained_v1.4.pdf ).
The OTMP CCLDC standard compliance matrix says that proprietary connectors on the handset itself are non-compliant. (See page 20 of their product brief here:
http://internal.omtp.org/Lists/ReqP...Charging and Local Data Connectivity v1.0.pdf ).
I see a compromise such as the one mentioned above, namely, maintaining the current dock connector while adding a second, Micro-USB connector, as a possible compliant solution.
Question:
What do those 30 pins do?
If you were to go from a 30 pin dock connector to a 5 pin USB connector what would you be giving up?
What do those other 25 pins do?
I honestly can't have an opinion on this matter without knowing that. Does anyone here know?
Some of those pins provide analog input and output, such as component and composite video outputs, and stereo audio input and output.
Other pins support a not-quite-standard RS232 asynchronous serial connection, used to communicate with certain accessories such as wired remote controls or the IR remote control transceiver on the Universal Dock.
Other pins used to be used to provide firewire data and charging support. Firewire power supplies have different voltage and current characteristics that would fry a USB transceiver chip, so they cannot share a common connection. Pins such as these are probably not connected to anything anymore now that Firewire support has been dropped.
For more details, see this link:
http://pinouts.ru/PortableDevices/ipod_pinout.shtml
