> why not just have (snip) one LED that's turned on/off?
I used to have a camera with a battery charger that only had one LED that was turned on/off. The problem with that particular solution to the red/green charge indicator is that you don't necessarily know if it's off because it's fully charged, or off because it's not plugged in correctly or there's no power, and I got burned a few times this way. So to have two separate labelled LEDs would be a nicer solution, one for power and one for whether or not it was charging.
My previous camera had the one LED that was on/off and I never had a problem with it. When I first plugged it in I would insure that the light was on and then I'd just leave it alone until the light was off. I tend to charge my batteries though in an area of the room where it won't be disturbed and likely to accidently get unplugged or whatever.
I see your point but I'd still prefer one LED that was on/off than the LED that's red/green which I can't tell the difference between at all. They just had to use the two colors that make up the most common form of color blindness . . .
Ah yeah. If it's worth noting, that charger of mine was in two pieces: the charger, and the power cable. The latter went behind my desk, and once in a while it would get dislodged. The LED would never come on if the battery were charged, but I had two batteries and never kept track of what to charge, and it took effort to seat the battery correctly...it was horrible.
I guess the red/green LEDs is just because those colors are fairly logical, although pretty stupid for colorblind people. My current camera has only one LED going red/green as well, and Apple's laptop chargers have always had some sort of light for that too (although, more than one way to tell if something was charged or not).
I used to have a camera with a battery charger that only had one LED that was turned on/off. The problem with that particular solution to the red/green charge indicator is that you don't necessarily know if it's off because it's fully charged, or off because it's not plugged in correctly or there's no power, and I got burned a few times this way. So to have two separate labelled LEDs would be a nicer solution, one for power and one for whether or not it was charging.