Samsung are about the launch the E1107 Crest solar powered mobile phone in Europe and Asia.
The phone integrates the effective free energy from the sun making this a virtually self powered phone. In reality for average use the phone will need to be normally powered via the usual A/C adapter and the solar aspect used as a top up energy source. Needing an hours exposure to give the phone just around 5 to 10 minutes of talk time use makes it unsuitable for heavy users to be totally powered by solar. This does not mean unusable, for those that talk less often and as a standby phone it should work fully solar powered with a regular exposure to sunlight every day.
Being slightly on the thick side at 1.6cm the E1107 hosts features that you would expect on most cell phones. With a 1.5 inch colour display and the integration of a FM radio, SMS but does not have the ability to function as a MP3 player.
The price is expected to be under US$60 and while it does not match the top of the range cell phones it does introduce the ability of being self charging. This opens up the phone to markets where the availability of power might not be possible and for those users who may be in remote locations for a period of time. The next generation of solar phones should be able to host more energy hungry features with the introduction of better efficient solar panels and new solar generating case materials.
Dead phone, no more. While we are not quite at the same stage of the incandescent light bulb being replaced by CFL and LED, I think we can quite safely predict that the A/C adapter may become obsolete in a few years to come. On my desk I have a totally self powered solar calculator, it seems so normal not to be using batteries or a charger. Soon all those little devices we have and carry around will function just as happily off the gird like my little solar calculator. Energy saving, probably not a lot of CO2 saved from the atmosphere here when we compare to larger electrical goods. This, I feel, is a practical aspect of solar and that is just as important as saving energy.
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