Solar Cell Phone Is Earth Friendly, Dirt Cheap

samsung-e1107

By Evan Ackerman

You don’t generally expect much from a cell phone that costs less than sixty bucks, and with the Samsung E1107, you don’t get much. It’s got a 128 x 128 display, an FM radio, and a built-in flashlight. The reason that you’d buy it is the solar panel the takes up the entire back of the phone, promising up to 10 minutes of call time per hour in the sun. While not the most efficient way of charging your phone, it’s a million times better than an iPhone 3GS at out of power performance, and at least gives you an option for mobile charging.

The other reason to get this phone is that it’s good for the Earth: it helps reduce global warming. Not in the way you’re thinking, that would be too obvious. No, I’m talking about how having a solar panel out in the sun absorbs photons, preventing them from imparting their horrible energy into the ground and making everything just a little bit cooler. If everybody was using solar powered cell phones, not only would we be saving energy charging them, but charging them would actually cool the planet by some fraction of a degree that I’m just going to go ahead and call significant and important! Yay solar power!

So far, the E1107 is available pretty much everywhere except the US. Why must they taunt us so?

[ Newswire ] VIA [ Samsung Hub ]

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Self-Winding Cell Phone

chairman-custom

By Evan Ackerman

The problem with solar powered cell phones is that despite the fact that the sun is really big and all, most of the time, your phone is not anywhere near it. Most of the time, your phone is probably in one of your pockets. Shame on you, why do you have to hate the environment and use pockets?

Swiss watchmaker Ulysse Nardin has designed a cell phone called “Chairman” that incorporates a kinetic charger, which is the same kind of thing that you find in self-winding watches. It harvests energy from motion to charge itself. Of course, you can’t get something for nothing… Carrying this phone around is just gonna make it that much harder to walk. And if you’re as lazy as I am, a phone like this is probably never going to get charged anyway. But that’s okay, because it’s only available in a limited edition of 1846 and from the looks of it, if you can afford one of these watches, you can most likely also afford to hire someone to take it on walks for you. No specifics on pricing or release date yet, although we should find out more later this month.

If you don’t mind wasting a little extra time, I ran across some really cool clocks that can theoretically run forever, extracting all the energy they need from daily temperature changes of only a few degrees. You can read more about them here.

[ Ulysee Nardin ] VIA [ Born Rich ]

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