Nokia ships phone without charger
Intentionally
Selling mobile phones without chargers is an odd idea. But Nokia won’t bundle one with its new N79 Eco phone, part of its aim to become a greener company.
The Finnish handset manufacturer announced plans to ship phones without chargers at Nokia World, held back in December, and the N79 Eco is its first attempt.
The general theory, aside from saving money, is for Nokia to trim down phone packaging and reduce consumption of the materials used to make chargers.
But how are you supposed to charge the phone? Does it run on thin air? Hardly. Eco’s designed to be bought by those prepared to hunt around at home for a discarded Nokia charger, to share their partner’s charger or to ask friends for an unused one.
Nokia’s idea may sound crazy, but it could just work. Register Hardware already has boxes full of assorted cables and chargers, a fair few of which are Nokia juicers.
It's worth noting that the phone can also be charged up using a Micro USB cable, which is included.
The free-range icing on the eco cake is that Nokia makes a £4 donation to the World Wildlife Fund for every phone bought.
We’re not sure about the two bundled Xpress-on covers though, isn’t that just a little more unnecessary plastic?
Nokia’s E79 Eco is available now for £319 ($472/€356). ®
COMMENTS
Not a bad idea
This really is not a bad idea. Loyal Nokia customers probably already have a suitable charger kicking around (there seem to be about three Nokia chargers for every man, woman and child in the UK). Even those who haven't, probably use a computer from time to time. Modern batteries don't even need to be flattened completely before recharging, so there's less urgency.
It just takes one manufacturer to start a revolution
About time! I applaud Nokia's decision.
If other device manufacturers (phones, mp3 players, MIDs, netbooks, any gadgets) all follow suit, then we'll only need to buy ONE type of charger for everything. That means if you bought three or four to keep round the house, they should last years.
It'll lead to the end of the situation where you open a drawer to find a messy heap of 9 or 10 different chargers, with no idea of which one belongs to which device, or even if you still need it.
At last
A nokia that can charge off the usb.
Took long enough, lads.
I already have a usb-power adatptor on my internatinal plug converter, one for my car that came with my Ipaq charger, I can use the one that came with my tomtom.
This move is so self-evident that it is preposterous that we have waited this long. I have been saying for 15 years that the standards authorities should have required phones to have a standard connector to avoid the waste of manufacturing custom power bricks. USB is, de facto, an implimentaiton of this idea. Not as good as a proper international standard (I had in mind 3 mandated connctors for 'up to 500mA', 'up to 8A' and 'up to 24A' that everything - games consoles, laptops, etc would have to use, along with a pair of auxilliary contacts for voltage selection on the larger devices) but welcome nevertheless.
Someone had to take the plunge first...
... and Nokia was it. Good idea or bad (and I'm not debating it!), fair play to Nokia for sticking it's neck out knowing it was going to take a lot of shit for the decision, as these comments show. An in store option to buy one WITH a charger would probably be a good idea, but at least a company has finally been brave enough to acknowledge, if nothing else, the waste from all its old chargers.
A boon for Apple
As their Ipod charger converts mains to USB voltage
