I’ve upgraded my Nokia N95 8GB to the new N97. I figured it was about time. Note quite so much that I needed a new phone just right now. But time to capitalize on the high trade-in offer of my N95 8GB before the value drops too much. Time to sell off my N95 8GB before it becomes broken (as it almost did).
The N97 is not as huge a leap from the N95 8GB as it were the N95 8GB from my previous N73. I think it is what Nokia brands as a premium model, just like the N95 8GB was, so it is pretty expensive. But trading in the N95 8GB makes the price really affordable.
SingTel Shop is offering $400 for the phone. The previous weekend, I noted that M1 and StarHub were offering $300 and $400 respectively. The last weekend, the StarHub trade-in offer for the N95 8GB dropped to $300. I thought, I had better seize the opportunity now to take SingTel Shop’s $400 trade-in value.
The N97 is a quite an interesting new phone from Nokia. It’s only their second touchscreen phone, the first being the 5800 XpressMusic. Touchscreen phones are interesting, but a touchscreen-only phone certainly has some usability limitations. So a Nseries smartphone with both touchscreen interface and a full QWERTY keyboard makes for one interesting phone that caught my attention.
At some point later, I will probably write my little review of the phone, just like I usually do for other gadgets I acquire. For now, there’s one little thing I want to mention.
It’s the charging connector. The standard Nokia charging connector has changed again. It was annoying enough when they changed from the big connector to the small connector. Now, the data port, which is micro-USB, also servers as the charging connection.
Actually, charging via USB is a good thing. The idea is that with computers and USB ports being quite common place, charging via USB is convenient. The trouble is that micro-USB connector is not all that common, at least not at this time. In my house, we’ve finally “converted” totally to the new Nokia mini charging connector. Now, it looks like we’ve got to go through some change management again. I can’t just charge the new N97 anywhere, I’ve got to make sure I either have the convertor dongle, or the N97’s own micro-USB charger.
Being able to charge from a computer is great, of course. But, bear in mind that you don’t have computers everywhere, and you don’t have micro-USB cables everywhere either (at least not as common as mini-USB for now).
However, overall, I’m pleased that Nokia has decided to do charging via USB, so there’s no longer any need for a separate charging connector.
Update (30 Jun 2009): The next morning after writing the above post, I read about how Apple, Nokia and a bunch of other smartphone manufacturers have agreed to standardize their charger connectors in a deal struck with the European Commission. They are going to be using micro-USB. I guess the micro-USB standardization plan had been in the works for a while, and we’re seeing the result in the N97.