On July 31, 2009, the European Commission passed a resolution on a single standard of chargers for phone manufacturers. Beginning in 2010, all mobile phones that are delivered to the European market, were supposed to support the connection of a universal charger. The lawmakers went to such measures because of problems with the disposal of a huge number of discarded "chargers", the number of which increased every year.

According to the new law, the phones had to be charged with Mini USB (time measure) or Micro USB. Nokia, Samsung and LG in a short time implemented a new connector in all models released in 2010, and Apple decided not to abandon its own development called Lightning and released for the European market adapter from the available connector to Micro USB - thus the owners of the iPhone 5 , IPod touch 5, iPod nano 7, iPad 4 generation and iPad mini could charge their devices from a standard network adapter.