> It's bad enough that wall sockets haven't improved

There's not much need for that, to be honest, at least not for Continental Europe where the Schuko plug system is dominant. It's reasonably secure against children and offers enough capacity for all household loads, and industrial applications have all converged on the bulky IEC-60309/CEE-17 plugs.

Sometimes, a product is simply "good enough" and does not require further improvements (or alternatively, a better solution exists, but the cost for retrofitting is prohibitively large).

smartphones are critical to living life in most developed countries. it's the same level of utility as electricity at this point. I don't see anything wrong with requiring a standard port.

Legislation is not eternal. When USB-C outlives its usefulness, it can be legislated away in favour of a different standard. Or they could let a standards/industrial body make the binding decision.

> When USB-C outlives its usefulness, it can be legislated away in favour of a different standard.

When USB-C outlives its usefulness there won't be any ready-made standard for the legislation to switch to. Or at least if there is such a standard it won't come from the EU, or any other jurisdiction with similar regulations. Why would anyone develop a new standard for mobile devices when the law says they have to use USB-C? There are more profitable ways to spend the limited R&D budget than designing new ports which you might not ever be allowed to use.

The payoff is huge. Assuming that your connector will be allowed to charge royalties, you can make the money on the fact that literally every phone will be using it once you lobby to update the standard.

Besides that, whichever organization is behind USB is the obvious candidate. A new standard that's backwards compatible with the old one (because that's what consumers are likely after) except for the connector is best made by the org that developed the previous version of it.

Sure, the payoff is huge if you can charge royalties, but so is the risk. You don't want to be the one that spends tons of money to develop a new standard only to have someone else's design chosen. You're also limited in how much real-world testing you can do since you can't market devices with the new connector to the public until the law is changed. And if the government is going to mandate that everyone use a certain kind of port then it ought to be made available royalty-free, which removes the prospect of a huge payoff.

"It's bad enough that wall sockets haven't improved"

In what way, spesifically? What can you improve in a metal connector carrying current?

I'd like to see positive clamping (perhaps by means of a mechanical camming action) rather than relying on the springiness of metal contacts, which inevitably degrades over time due to metal fatigue.