Nokia N79 Eco - buy a phone without a charger
Published by Rafe Blandford at 19:54 UTC, January 15th 2009
Following in the footsteps of the N79 Active comes another N79 variant, the N79 Eco, which is available for pre-order through Nokia's UK online shop and 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 of Nokia's power of we: strategy. Read on for stats and the full scoop.
In addition to shipping without a charger, the Nokia N79 will come in a smaller box, which allows for further energy and waste savings. To round things off Nokia will, for each N79 Eco sold, donate £4 to the WWF (a global conservation organisation). It is likely the phone will be pre-loaded with 'power of we:' content - already available to existing users through Download!
The Nokia N79 Eco costs the same as the regular N79 in the online shop - £319. However, aside from the obvious eco-benefits, it does come in the Petrol Black colour (compared to Canvas White/Seal Gray), which should make your N79 stand out from the crowd.
The smaller box may not sound terribly significant, but when you operate on the scale of Nokia the little things really do add up. For example between February 2006 and the end of 2007, Nokia shipped 250 million phones in smaller packages resulting in 5,000 fewer truck journeys and saved 100 million Euros. In 2007, Nokia saved 15,000 tonnes of material (that's about 55,000 trees) and 100,000 m3 of water (that's around 18,000,000 toilets flushes).
Currently you can only pre-order the Nokia N79 Eco from the Nokia UK Shop, there is no indication of when it will start shipping. It is likely to be made available in other regions, perhaps through the various Nokia flagship stores.
On the pre-order page, there's also a link to a survey to gather consumer opinion about the idea of selling phones without chargers and other accessories, but we would also be interested in hearing your opinion in the comments thread.
Clearly there's scope for leaving out other accessories too. How many people really need a paper manual? Would downloading connectivity software from the Internet be a serious hurdle? How about the PC connectivity cable or headset? Personally I like the idea of the N79 Eco, but I imagine it will require a real cost saving to push most consumers into buying a 'reduced accessories' version of any phone. Reasonable prices (i.e. lower profit margins) on standalone accessories would also help - it's not as if the charger really costs £15 after all.
Of course, if you subsequently decide you do need an extra charger after all, you can further burnish your green credentials by buying Nokia's energy saving charger.
Rafe Blandford, All About Symbian, 15 Jan 2009
Categories: Hardware
Platforms: S60 3rd Edition
News Discussion
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.
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.
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%.
| 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. |
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%. |
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.
| Imagine a world where all brands use the same port for charging/data transfer. |
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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.
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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 :tongue:
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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.
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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 ;)
Nope that is wrong, I can use any micro-usb cable for charging/data connection.
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 :D
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 bought a Nokia BT handsfree ear-piece, and it came with a mains charger; this is actually pretty useless for a device which is more than likely going to spend most of its time in a car... a much better idea would have been to either ship it for a lower price with no charger, or to have included a car-charger instead.
I did buy a 1 GB mini SD card for 33 pounds in London two years ago. Turns out I could have bought that for about half the price back home even at that time. Mistake....
Due to this problem I'm afraid I'm always happy to get another charger.