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Motorola Makes Gasoline Powered Cell Phones
Wister285 writes "Well, now that PDAs are integrated with cell phones, you'll need some extra juice to power that thing. Motorola seems to think that the next generation of cell phones needs to be powered by gas (fuel cells). Supposedly these cell phones can last for a whole month without needing to be recharged. Batteries are not being eliminated since the "power plant" of the phone is located on the user's belt. Seems interesting. Gives a whole new meaning to "Fill 'er up!""
The first paragraph of the article (which is all I bothered to read, but that's still more than CmdrTaco) clearly says "methane gas-powered", not "gasoline powered".
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
The way i understand it, it works as follows:
1. You buy the fuel cell powerplant which is slightly smaller than a standard battery
2. You keep using you phone as usual - recharging the normal battery when it goes flat.
3. If you are out in the fields with no electricity or in a hotel without your charger, you hook up the phone with the flat battery to the fuelcell to recharge the normal battery
4. After charging the devices are disconnected from each other and you keep using your phone like you are used to...
I kinda like the idea, but hope for flexibility in the fuelcell device. It sure would kick ass if i not only could "refuel" my cell but also my PDA, MP2 player or whatever gizmo is currently hungry.
+++ath0
I was at the Sprint PCS store the other day looking at the Kyocera and Samsung Palm phones. Pretty cool. I have a Palm VIIx with Palm net, but to have a PIM, a network appliance, AND a phone would just be cool. Anyhow, Palm.net charges not by TIME, but by BIT...and this makes sense, as the data services are low-bandwidth and bursty. Just as it should be for a handheld device. Well, just to prove that they JUST DON'T GET IT Sprint PCS charges by the minute. You check your email and there is none: 16 seconds, 110 bytes, $0.39. I can go a whole month on Palm.net for $12, checking my email several times per day. I figured I'd rack up close to $50 on Sprint--and that's not allowing for actually GETTING any mail. I checked in with AT&T, they charge the same.
Apparently, the Kyocera and Samsung phones actually use a digital modem and connect to an ISP, rather than simply talking to the "network" like Palm.net. So you are physically setting up a PPP session with an ISP and running an IP stack. What a bunch of idiots. Wireless data network my ass.
So does anyone know of any providers that actually have a cool phone/Palm/data network worth needing extra battery life--that don't charge by the minute?
Scott
"Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid."
Methane doesn't stink. It's basically odorless.
Natural gas doesn't smell by itself. Distributors add methyl mercaptan to it in order to make it smell, so that leaks can be found. (Walk up and down the street in front of my house any day of the year and you'll smell it coming from the rather porous old Boston Gas/Keyspan pipes. They make repairs when their leak detector shows the concentration getting scary.) Mercaptan was chosen because it, well, has a strong and distinctive smell. Acetylene smell similar but is itself explosive.
This practice began after a very unfortunate incident in the 1930s. The public school in London, Texas had been heated by gas that was being, uh, skimmed off of a pipeline passing from a nearby well. The connection wasn't exactly professional. A leak sprang, and gas accumulated in the basement, reaching serious concentrations without being noticed. It blew the school sky-high, killing about 200 people, including most of the children, largely wiping the town off the map. (The town, near Tyler, was renamed New London; it now has about 900 inhabitants.)
People nowadays appreciate methane's properties a bit better. A little cartridge to power a fuel cell should not be a problem.
What are the added moving parts to which you are referring? Fuel cells do not use moving parts. Searching on Google took me about 15 seconds to find this page:
http://216.51.18.233/whatis.html
It shows a simple diagram of a fuel cell. It has the same number of moving parts as a conventional battery.
Can someone please change the headline so it doesn't say "gasoline-powered?"
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http://www.fuelcells.org/
Good introduction.
Strangely enough, I do recall the proposal to use gasoline for fuel cells, say in cars, for pollution control, etc. The idea is that you need to have a cheap source of hydrogen and oxegen. And you do not what to use tap water because of the impurities. (never mind that producing a system that could handle impurities would cut the legs from under the Oil Companies)
Any number of complex hydrocarbons could be used as a fuel for such a system. Methane is just one.
And the one that some people like is to derive the hydrogen and carbon from ordinary gasoline. Although this is a wild mix of things, it has the advantadge of that it continues to feed the Oil Companies, and it takes advantadge of the distribution system already in place.
Technology is partly based on the profit center, after all.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
One, this could allow a cell phone battery to last months, not days. Two, it's a clean independent fuel source. Three, how many moving parts do you think there are? Plug it in, you push down a lever that releases an amount of methane into a chamber. Know how long a Bic lighter can last? Certainly longer than most folks keep their phones. Cell phone makers ALREADY consider their devices disposable. Motorola's Timeport with OLED will burn out with regular use in about 3 years.
Finally, this has more application than just phones. Laptops, PDA units, GPS units, tools, toys could all use this technology. This allows people not to be tethered to power lines to use these devices.
Fuel cells offer a great alternative to conventional energy sources. They promise a cheap portable and realistic power source. Its not a stupid idea. Its a forward thinking idea that has a lot of potential.
Fuel cells generate power (and heat) by combining hydrogen and oxygen into water. The hydrogen would be made from methane, using a catalyst developed by NASA. The heat, I guess, would lend new meaning to the term "a hot call". And the water? If you keep you cell phone in your pants pocket for a while, it may look like you have a bladder problem.
BTW, an article in today's Wall Street Journal (available only to paid subscribers) described how auto manufacturers are getting heavily into fuel-cell manufacturing. They expect that fuel-cell powered vehicles will be common by the end of the decade.
Secondly, this was only a matter of time. I hope we switch from methane to hydrogen soon though. Anywho, Scientific American has a pretty informative article on fuel cells in mobile devices. It's a bit old (1998) but still relevant. A quick Google search turned up some more:
CNN: NEC develops fuel cell for handhelds
ABCNEWS: Fuel Cell Batteries Could Power Next Wave of Technology