There is a course a major flaw with mobile phones: they need charging. And they always seem to be in need of a charge at the most inconvenient time. What’s more frustrating, is that when you’ve left your own charger at home, or in the office, you have to find someone with a similar make and model of phone to get some juice. But no longer, because help is at hand.

It’s called the Universal Charging Solution and is a grand initiative between the GSMA and 21 of the leading mobile phone operators and manufacturers.

Simply put, the initiative was announced in February at the Mobile World Congress 2009 in Barcelona and involves a commitment to implement cross-industry standard for a Universal Charging Solution for new mobile phones. In other words, one charger will charge every mobile phone made in the future.

It’s a great idea and, as cynics might suggest, has been resisted for many years because of the additional revenues that a phone manufacturer can generate with its own charger. But if the PR hype is to be believed, then green considerations have for once got the better of the accountants.

The GSMA reckons that there is some 51,000 tonnes of duplicate chargers out there and that if such a thing as a standardised charger were to be introduced, then there would be an estimated 50 per cent reduction in standby energy consumption.

The initiative was launched by the GSMA at the Mobile World Congress 2009 in Barcelona. It was supported by 3 Group, AT&T, HTC, KT, LG, mobilkom austria, Motorola, Nokia, NTT DOCOMO, Orange, Orascom Telecom, Qualcomm, Rogers Wireless, Samsung, Softbank Mobile, Sony Ericsson, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telenor, Telstra, T-Mobile and Vodafone.

And collectively they have a dream: that by 2012 the worldwide market will be using a Micro-USB charging interface and that the majority of new mobile phones will support a universal charging connector.

In short, that means soon you won’t have to embark on an epic search in order to get your phone charged because, hopefully, everyone will have one that will work on your phone. Good luck.