Different blue HP 50g model variants

[matthiaspaul]

Hi,

up to now I was living under the impression that there were two model variants of the HP 50g, the original black one (model F2229A introduced in 2009) and the later blue one (model NW240AA, which, according to forum posts, first showed up in 2010).

The blue NW240AA#UUZ (8-85631-58074) unit I bought in Germany came in a transparent plastic / cardboard back blister pack showing the black(!) model, and with 2009 (not 2010!) copyright strings. The NW240AA label is not a sticker, but actually part of the print. It came with German, Dutch, French and Italian manuals. The installed firmware is 2.15 (build 106). The sticker on the back of the calculator reads CNA22103Fx. The color is ultramarine, considerably deeper in color than what can be seen on most pictures in the web (a fact I erroneously attributed to a lack of proper white-balancing or color-calibration so far).

However, I now stumbled upon another variant of the blue unit, which I obtained in Spain. It came in a cardboard box (not a blister pack) actually showing a picture of the blue unit, and now with 2012 copyright strings, but labelled F2229AA#B17 (8-827806-816688) instead of NW240AA, again not a sticker of some kind, but fixed in the print. Manuals included are German, French and Spanish, firmware is still 2.15 (build 106), not the recently discovered 2.16 firmware, which was available in 2012 already. However, this unit (CNA22103Lx) is colored in a lighter blue shade, much more cyan than ultramarine, quite a close match to what can be seen on most of the web pictures. The keyboard has the same feel, but the display polarizer appears to be slightly darker.

But it gets even more confusing: In fact, I bought two blue units from the same dealer in Spain. The second Spanish one (also CNA22103Lx, differing only in an offset of 3 in the last digit) came in the same type of package and with identical accessories as the other one. However, it has the darker colored ultramarine housing, that is, it is looking identical to the blue unit I bought in Germany.

Any clues?

Greetings,

Matthias