Remember in ye olde days when we were all dependent on phones with cords? Sucked, right? But at least we didn’t have to continually worry about having bars in places. And yet, even as technology causes us worry, it can also cause us joy by giving us the opportunity to fix those problems by spending a bunch of money.
We’ve seen a few cell signal boosters before, but they’ve been complicated and expensive affairs, while this USB model is instead simple and (slightly less) expensive. All you have to do is plug it into a USB port, and it works. No software, no drivers, it just uses the port for power (which means you can also plug it into a wall adapter). The booster should give you a bump of 2-3 bars within 5 feet of the antenna. It’s supposed to work with “every carrier in Canada and the US” except Nextel, and includes 3G data frequencies. Sounds helpful, but at $100, it’s still about $50 more than I’d realistically want to spend… Especially since increasing cell reception is one of the few reasons I have to drag my ass outside.
Ordinarily, having a disembodied Care Bear head would be more than a little freaky. But you can relax. It’s dead, and it’s not coming back, and you can make sure of that jamming your cell phone into its brain cavity every night. They only cost $14, but you might get more emotional fulfillment out of violently making one yourself.
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.
Okay, first of all, this is legit, not a hack. And secondly, it only works in Germany. In a few villages. I know, it’s a shame, and I got your hopes up for nothing. The German system, called Dial4Light, is designed to save energy by only turning streetlights on when somebody actually needs them. If you’re out and about at night, all you have to do is dial a number, enter a code for your street, and the lights will come on for 15 minutes. The system is completely free, and cut electricity bills by an impressive 25%.
Interestingly, a BBC video report on the Dial4Light shows that there is apparently a billing system already in place, it’s just not in use. In some ways, billing people individually for turning on streetlights makes sense: if everyone else is sleeping, why should they be footing the bill for your 2am street hockey games?
What I’d like to see would be streetlights that operate on the same basic principle, except using Bluetooth instead of a phone call. All you’d have to do is carry your cell phone with you, and whenever a streetlight detected a Bluetooth signal, it would turn on. That way, you’d have light where you wanted it, when you wanted it, without any waste of electricity or excess light pollution.
For some weird reason which probably should not be analyzed too deeply, Hyundai has decided to create a cell phone based on a dolphin. For real. See the picture? Yep, it’s a dolphin phone. The side view is the only really interesting bit, otherwise the phone is mostly ho-hum, with a 240×400 touchscreen, 3.2 megapixel camera, MP3 player, FM tuner, and a Yamaha speaker thrown in. It should cost an unlikely $320 when it’s released in May. Here’s what the actual phone looks like:
Except, you know what? To my dubiously trained eye, this looks a lot more like a whale phone. See for yourself, after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
At Mobile World Congress 2009 this week, LG was displaying a new cell phone with a solar panel battery back that won’t need to be plugged in until the sun goes dead in 6-odd billion years. Ten minutes of sun gets you three minutes of talk time, which is not half bad… The phone is due to be released in Europe by the end of this year, but hopefully LG will take the obvious step of just manufacturing battery backs with integrated solar panels, which would allow existing handsets to be quickly and easily converted to solar charging.
The other thing in that picture is a solar powered Bluetooth hands-free speakerphone, the LG HFB-500. LG was giving these out at their press conference at CES, and it was just too nifty to include in our CES swag giveaway (sorry). It comes with a suction mount to stick it in the windshield of your car, as well as a power adapter that you’ll ideally never use. It’s got an on/off button (it shuts off automatically), a big call answer button, and some volume buttons. That’s it. I’ve had it up on the windshield of my car since January, and I’ve never had to charge it, it’s just always there and ready to go. The LG HFB-500 costs $70 or $80 depending on where you look, which is maybe a little steep, but having gadgets that are ever present and functional without any plugs or maintenance whatsoever is worth a little extra money, I’d say.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but the GSM Association (which includes such members as Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, LG, T-Mobile, and AT&T) has agreed for seriously we mean it this time they swear that they’re going to make allmost the majority of handsets micro-USB charger compliant soon by 2012. I’m sure they’re just doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, and not because the European Union was threatening legal action, but let’s just say I’ll be more than a little bit shocked if cell phone manufacturers manage to give up the lucrative proprietary accessory market just because it’s a good idea that will make things easier for consumers and better for the environment.
LEGOs LEGO bricks are becoming popular gadget components; recently we’ve seen them in everything from USB hubs to digital cameras. But unlike those gadgets, this LEGO cell phone from Alcatel actually takes advantage of the whole point of LEGOs LEGO bricks, which is that you can take them apart and put them back together differently.
One of the features of the phone (which is otherwise fairly blah) is a basic white body, with modular LEGOy plates that can be snapped on to change the color scheme. So yes, it’s just a geeky version of interchangeable faceplates… But that’s what makes it awesome, right?
By Evan Ackerman
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By Evan Ackerman
