Sony continues with their ‘me too!’ mentality with last week’s announcement of their new Portable USB Power Supply Adapter. It’s apparently available now, though a 20-minute search of Sony’s various sites around the world returned no indication of its existence besides this vague press release on the Sony Europe site. But from what I can tell, it features a modular design with one half serving as a charger/ac adapter, while the other features a rechargeable Li-Ion battery and a USB port for topping off any gadgets that can charge over USB. Unfortunately I’ve no idea what the battery’s capacity is or just how many devices it can recharge, or even how much it will set you back.
If your laptop is ‘blessed’ with one of those massive black power bricks then Elecom has a pretty simple adapter you can slap between it and the power cord, providing you with a couple of extra outlets. The adapter is available in a 2-prong model for about $15, and a 3-prong grounded one for about $21, though single outlet versions of each are also available if you don’t have room to carry that extra inch of plastic.
At the end of last month, Nokia filed a patent for a “piezoelectric kinetic energy harvester” for mobile phones. If they get it to work, it will enable mobile phones to charge themselves. Brillliant! Why didn’t I think of that?
I’ll tell you why I didn’t think of that. It’s because a “piezoelectric kinetic energy harvester” works by generating electricity from crystals which are compressed by movement. So, the catch is (of course there’s a catch), you have to be moving for the phone to charge. As in, not sedentary in front of the computer. This means that people like me will have dead cell phones 99% of the time, with the remaining 1% of uptime due to bedroom to bathroom transitions plus trips to the fridge. Maybe I’ll just strap it to my cat and bust out the laser pointer for a few hours, that should do the trick.
Cat or no cat, it’s always good to see big companies trying to innovate when it comes to green energy and infinite phone calls. Or at least, it’s good to see them take the first tentative steps in the form of a patent.
Traveling with a compact power bar of some sort is a necessity these days, which is why I sincerely hope this Cute Cube power adapter concept becomes a reality, and soon! Designed by Zhang Xi, Wang Hui, Miao Yingying, Zhou Xing and Cai Yun and winner of a most deserved Red Dot Design Award, the Cute Cube is nothing more than your run-of-the-mill power bar, but in a vastly improved package.
First of all the compact cube shape makes it easy to carry in a laptop bag or suitcase, but it also ensures the sockets aren’t sitting next to each other, which can be problematic if you’ve got a large transformer plugged in that blocks other outlets. And if you do run into an issue because of the size of the plug you’re using or the orientation of its cord, each of the sockets on the Cute Cube can rotate to accommodate everything you need to plug in. Cute? Kind of. Brilliant? Absolutely.
I wouldn’t necessarily say that charging my iPhone with the included sync cable is inconvenient, but I can definitely see the advantage of being able to just drop it on a table to top off the battery. And the Hug from Case-Mate uses Fulton Innovation’s eCoupled Wireless Power system to enable you to do just that.
Now since the iPhone’s battery isn’t removable or even accessible the Hug enables wireless charging via a plastic case. And because there’s an induction coil inside there and other electronicy bits, you’ll have to deal with a bit more bulk than you may otherwise be used to. But the case does still allow the use of the camera and access to the dock connector on the bottom, and it comes with a charging pad that’s compatible with other eCoupled devices if you don’t happen to have a desk with that functionality built-in.
The Hug will be available sometime around early to mid February, for a hefty $90.
This thing is, seriously, the highlight of CES for me (so far) this year. 3D TVs and eBook readers are fine, but there’s nothing amazing about them.
The Airnergy Charger is amazing. Forget your android battery saver/iphone battery saver, this charger handles everything via WiFi directly. This little box has, inside it, some kind of circuitry that harvests WiFi energy out of the air and converts it into electricity. This has been done before, but the Airnergy is able to harvest electricity with a high enough efficiency to make it practically useful: on the CES floor, they were able to charge a BlackBerry from 30% to full in about 90 minutes, using nothing but ambient WiFi signals as a power source.
The Airnergy has a battery inside it, so you can just carry it around and as long as you’re near some WiFi, it charges itself. Unlike a solar charger, it works at night and you can keep it in your pocket. Of course, proximity to the WiFi source and the number of WiFi sources is important, but at the rate it charges, if you have a home wireless network you could probably just leave anywhere in your house overnight and it would be pretty close to full in the morning.
Here is the really, really unbelievable part: RCA says that the USB charger will be available this summer for $40, and a battery with the WiFi harvesting technology will be available soon after. I mean, all kinds of people are pushing wireless charging, but this would hands down take the cake… It doesn’t need a pad and it’s charging all the time, for free, in just about any urban environment.
We didn’t think you’d believe all this, so we made RCA explain it all on video:
Yeah, we’ll definitely be keeping you updated on this one.
Apple has managed to significantly shrink the size of the AC to USB power adapter it ships with the iPhone, but I think these Flipower devices edge them out just slightly when it comes to their compact size. And the simple secret to slimming them down was to just remove their prongs. Instead, you’ll find a flip out panel that almost looks like a wall socket, and in a way it is. You see the Flipower is designed to sit between a wall socket and a power plug as you can see it doing with the power bar in the upper corner of that photo, and thanks to a set of thin metal wires, it’s able to draw power from the outlet and pass it onto a connected USB device.
The obvious downside of course is that you need to have something plugged into a wall or power bar before the Flipower is actually usable, but in reality finding someplace to do so isn’t really that hard. But it doesn’t really matter since pricing and availability info for the US, or anywhere, are currently unknown.
If you’re one of those uber-hip hipsters with the solar panels on your roof, I envy you and your free electricity. But until somebody invents a solar panel that generates electricity in the dark, there are always going to be times when you’ve got more electricity than you need (high noon) and times when you’ve got less electricity than you need (low noon, aka high moon). If you’ve been generating excess energy, you’ve probably been selling it back to your energy company at a tidy profit, but that doesn’t exactly help you achieve grid independence… The way to do THAT would be through some kind of energy storage system, which lets you store up excess energy and use it when you need it. This is just what Panasonic would like to install in your house, in the form of a giant lithium ion battery.
This household battery, which Panasonic says should be able to power the average home (whatever that means) for a solid week, will be available sometime in 2011. It will be somehow hooked up to your TV, which will allow you to monitor energy usage. We don’t yet have any information on how much this thing will cost, but I bet it’ll be hard to justify in terms of storage benefits and cost savings (and possibly convenience) versus the up-front cost of the system. As with most micro-energy generation systems, it’ll probably end up being more of a feel-good measure than an actual boost to efficiency, but at least it’ll keep your computer on for an extra week when the revolution comes and there’s no more grid power.
While we’re still (apparently) a long way away from the mythical standardization of cell phone chargers, more and more phones (and other gadgets like portable music players and digital cameras) have come to rely on (or at least accept) USB connections for recharging. The current supplied by most USB connections probably won’t charge your gadget as fast as whatever proprietary wall plug that came with it, but the epic level of convenience of only needing one plug and one cable more than makes up for it.
Unless you need to charge two things at the same time, in which case multiple powered USB ports are a necessity. Your laptop probably has multiple powered USB ports, but sometimes leaving your laptop plugged in and turned on just to charge some stuff isn’t especially convenient, sometimes you don’t want to carry around your laptop at all, and sometimes you just don’t want to deal with all the crap that happens when you plug something in that also uses USB to transfer data.
So after all that ranting, you’re probably expecting some kind of fantabulous thing that will solve all of your USB charging needs. Sorry. All I’ve got is this wall jack that has TWO USB charging plugs instead of ONE. And it’s small and black and has foldy plugs. And it only costs $7. Find it at USB Geek.
