Nokia and their charger
There once was a time that you could go to any office in the world and be able to charge your Nokia phone. Every Nokia phone used the same charger. A small and insignificant thing, yet this small detail in the technical implementation was undoubtedly important in maintaining brand loyalty and the dominance of Nokia in the market place. Nokia built informal communities in workplaces that no other brand did. Communities that shared their chargers. I’ve not witnessed that with other brands.
Then something happened at Nokia. They changed the charger. The plug is now smaller. I presume this can only be down to the ever decreasing size of their phones. But my new Nokia N80 is bigger than my old Nokia that used the old charger. Bottom line? There are half a dozen old style chargers lying around in the office. There are no new ones around. I leave mine at home / it is broken, and combined with the risibly short battery life of the N80, I am stuffed. This will impact my purchasing decision when I change phones. I’ve been loyal to Nokia since I got my first mobile almost ten years ago. No more.
(As a postscript, I recently found myself with three other unlucky souls who owned a Nokia N80. Not one of us had a good thing to say about it. If you are in the market for a new phone, steer clear of the N80. Buy one at your peril!)
eay there marc.
i faced the same issue when i upgraded to a new nokia, and had the same negative reaction.
BUT, nokia did send an adaptor for the old to the new, so..
hats off to nokia
I have a N70. It came with the charger you are talking and along came the lot of annoyance. I am still able to charge my phone anywhere provided I carry my charger or carry a small (can easily get lost) extension converter cable to convert from old socket size to new smaller one. This also means I would have to carry my charger with the phone, buy a car charger for this phone and none of us friends can share their chargers because of this incompatibility.
Why did I think of switching to nokia from my favourite sony ericsson…
I just bought a new Nokia from Virgin. My second ever phone, the last one was a Nokia and its still going after five years.
Virgin sent me an old style charger with my new phone and no adapter! I can’t charge it up. It’s still in the box and will be untill I have enough free time to get on the phone and yell at them. But which them, Nokia or Virgin?
Do you guys have any clue why Nokia would do such thing? I think it’s such a hassle and there must be some non-technical issue here.