The Samsung E1107 “Crest Solar” is not a Hollywood-grade whitening toothpaste, but instead a nice little low-end phone with a solar cell in the back. An hour of good, clean charging will give the user five or ten minutes of talk time. Fantastic stuff.
You won’t ever see it in North America because of the limited frequencies on which it operates, but it should show up in much of the rest of the world. [via Treehugger]
Hey Joel: Isn’t it time you went camping again?
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/04/21/week-in-the-woods-fi.html
I really would like to see you build on last year’s attempt. Or perhaps a BBG theme day on computing “off-the-grid” ?
At least a phone has a chance of charging with a tiny solar panel like this… not like putting 100W of panels on top of a Hybrid car.
Aside from the heat issue Li-ion is perfect for solar charging as there is no memory, and charge efficiencies are virtually 100%.
Thank you a lot for your nice article referring to Solar panels on phones make me happy, no matter how useful they may actually be! If students want to and best custom essay choose the best cheap essay writing service. It is the way to academic success!
Luckily, Li-ion batteries love being exposed to high temperatures, of the sort found in direct sunlight, for extended periods of time. It makes them live long, happy lives, and definitely doesn’t cause them do die even faster than they already do.
I can definitely see a number of situations where solar charging could be useful; but as somebody who doesn’t like replacing batteries any more than he has to, I’d like to see the solar charger separate from the battery compartment.