Nokia N79 Eco - buy a phone without a charger

[Rafe]

Following in the footsteps of the N79 Active from earlier this week is the N79 Eco. The N79 Eco, which is available for pre-order through Nokia's UK online shop, ships without a charger. Customers are expected to retain the charger from their previous Nokia device. The concept is part of a trial to save energy and reduce waste and is part Nokia's power of we: strategy.

Read on in the full article.

[Tzer2]

For people who are upgrading to another Nokia, they really could go the whole hog and ditch everything except the phone and its battery.

No one reads the manual (they can look it up online), no one needs the CD (they can download its contents online), chargers, memory cards and USB cables can come from the old phone, people probably have headphones anyway etc.

[slitchfield]

I'd have thought that a more drastic 'Nxx Eco Upgrade' system would work to a degree, with just phone and battery, minimally packaged, at a £25 (say) discount plus an extra £5 going to WWF or similar.

The only trouble is that an awful lot of top end smartphones are recycled to other family members or sold - in either case, they need their accessories to go with them..... This is the biggest gotcha in the scheme.

Agreed with Tzer2. I'm all for this. We have to start somewhere. Probably without all those extras, the price could come down a bit?Maybe those chargers could come as an optional at extra price.

Not to be negative, but...
This is utterly retarded. I checked the address of the site twice, to make sure it was AAS and not the Onion. I also checked the date, and April 1st is months away.
Instead of bundling new, more energy-efficient chargers with each new phone, they ask you to use the old, energy-inefficient one that came with your previous one. Kudos. Nokia, I totally believe that you're all about saving the environment. Right. Not at all a scam, where you save 3% in materials, and donate only 1% to the WWF, cashing the remaining 2%.

Given the cost of producing a new charger, it is actually more efficient to let people continue to use their old chargers (ideally providing them adapters for all the past plug changes, and not changing the plug anymore) until they no longer work, at which time consumers would buy the energy-efficient model. Like buying a hybrid to replace a perfectly-good 2-year old standard car, it just isn't efficient to have people buy new chargers now.

[Tzer2]

Not to be negative, but... This is utterly retarded. I checked the address of the site twice, to make sure it was AAS and not the Onion. I also checked the date, and April 1st is months away.

Erm, you are being negative. :-)

I know what you mean about some schemes just making things worse, but it's always a balance between saving energy in consumption and saving it in production. I don't know what the balance is here though.

Apparently that's one of the problems with solar panels, they take a lot of energy to make and would have to earn all that back before they actually start saving energy. And then it has to be disposed of when it dies...

Not at all a scam, where you save 3% in materials, and donate only 1% to the WWF, cashing the remaining 2%.

Scam? The point is to conserve resources, and presumably a charger-less does consume less resources.

And if manufacturers make a profit from conserving natural resources, that's a good thing isn't it? It would encourage them to do it more.

It's a great idea. It could accelerate the padronized-port trend. Imagine a world where all brands use the same port for charging/data transfer.

[Tzer2]

Imagine a world where all brands use the same port for charging/data transfer.

I think that's the idea of USB charging really, but for some reason Nokia doesn't make many phones with USB charging ability.

[Kazutoyo]

I think this is a great idea

Originally Posted by Tzer2

I think that's the idea of USB charging really, but for some reason Nokia doesn't make many phones with USB charging ability.

Yeah, OMTP (in which Nokia is a member) decided back in september 2007 that micro USB should be an universial charger.

Also read in an Nokia interview that their phones have a development cycle of ~18 months, so I guess we will soon see a lot of phones that use it later this year. That is, if Nokia decided to follow OMTP back then

[malerocks]

Originally Posted by Tzer2

I think that's the idea of USB charging really, but for some reason Nokia doesn't make many phones with USB charging ability.

When Nokia introduced USB charging on N85, I thought that is the way Nokia is going, but then phones were announced after that which did not have USB port on the phone as the charging point. That means that if you use a N85, you need a separate charger, but for all other phones you need the 2mm charger.

Plus I read on another forum that the n85 charges only if you use the USB charger / cord provided by Nokia. Silly in my opinion. Whats the point of having a universal port if you cant use it with other chargers?

Nokia makes great products, but some things are plain silly. Thats balance I guess

Plus I read on another forum that the n85 charges only if you use the USB charger / cord provided by Nokia. Silly in my opinion. Whats the point of having a universal port if you cant use it with other chargers?

Nope that is wrong, I can use any micro-usb cable for charging/data connection.

hope to see universal charger or wireless charger
I would definately invest in a solar panel based chargers, which definately needs an universal effort for most of my rechargeable batteries and other devices can be worth.
Packaging i only need to see that the mobile phone was not tampered while transportation....hence new packaging should ensure that it is only tamper proof with a mobile phone inside

[Rafe]

There's an adapter for 2mm to microUSB charger coming soon. See http://www.nokia.co.uk/ca-146c

But I think being fair to Nokia 3 different types of charger across all their phones (over 5+ years) is impressive. Especially when you have 35-40% market share...

i'm all for the concept, but doesn't "petrol black" color send mixed marketing message? doesn't make any difference, but doesn't sound ecofriendly either.