Mittwoch, 14. April 2010

The power connector belongs to the bottom

I have never understood why the power connectors are spread all among the bodies of various smartphones, whereas the is only one logical location for it. At the bottom. Why? Because it is the only position where a car mount could be build for it without any ugly extra cables. In fact, there are countries where it is forbidden to use a mobile phone in the card without a hands free set. This might not be an issue for phones targeted at kids, as they usually won't have a car anyway. But for all phones targeted at adults, especially for smartphones aimed at the professional user, a power connector at the bottom is a must in my opinion.
The people at Brodit are very professional in getting almost every phone into almost every car. But look, what quirks they have to make sometimes. When I had a Nokia 5800, I also had the Brodit car mount for it. But when I dropped the 5800 into the mount, I had to connect the power cable to the power connector at the top as shown at brodit.se. This looks even worse on a N97 with a power connector on the left side.
But there is some hope. Nokia just announced the C6, among with other messaging phones. There is no photo from bottom out right now, but I could not find a power connector on the photos of any other side. The C6 can be seen as a 5800 with a slide out QWERTY keyboard, more RAM and a higher spec camera. Or as a low cost alternative to the N97, if you like. And maybe this time they got the location of the power connector right ...

Update
There is a detailed review of the C6 on mobile-review (thanks for the photo), showing that the power jack is definitively on the bottom. But there is a micro USB port at the top. As mobile-review assumed, this could mean that the C6 might not support USB charging. This would definitely be a shame. When I am at business travels, I hate to carry a bunch of power connectors with me and try to charge as much devices as possible via USB. So hopefully, the proprietary connector at the botton is just an option. But at least, there is a power jack at the bottom, making it possible to build drop in car kits for it.

Keine Kommentare: