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First Wind-up Phone Charger Review
Jonathan Bennett writes "Here's the first actual review (as opposed to speculation) of Motorola's FreeCharge hand-operated mobile phone charger. Only works with Motorola phones for now, but other devices on the way.
"
"Motorola claims that 45 seconds' winding will produce 4-6 minutes of talk time and 'several hours' of standby time."
That's actually not bad at all. The only problem is that if you wind it to get standby back, if someone calls you are likely to only have a minute or so of talking. This seems like an excellent idea for emergencies though.
This is nothing more than a dynamo flashlight or disaster radio without the bulb or radio.
I'm not impressed!
AWG
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
For years, I've been excercizing for this product, once, twice, or sometimes even three times a day. At last all that hard work and repetitive motion will pay off.
And if I can get one of those phones that can view color photos, I might be able to continue excercizing after I've charged it.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
A "squeeze the handle a few times and you can make a call" unit might be more useful.
Why don't they just do it like watches do?
Or: http://howthingswork.virginia.edu/clocks.html
OK you better be away from a power source for a LONG time before you need one of these. Granted if you were realy desperate and bothered to cary this small brick around with you. The battery side that takes 36 minutes of winding to charge is 1000ma assuming you would spend an hour a day winding this thing up (or just plug it into a socket and recharge it) and that it weighs in at two thirds of a pound you would be better off getting a few extra cell phone batteries (yes some people do actualy remove there battery and replace it every now and again)
No sir I dont like it.
Uh, not to repeat myself but... Almost usless news connected to products yet again
Now your wrist can get tired on all of your phone calls, not just the ones you hope your significant other doesn't see on the bill.
To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.
As well as the mobile charger modules, you're given a torch module for the FreeCharge. Unfortunately it's a bit disappointing, considering that FreePlay has produced wind-up torches before.
This sounds like some cool James Bond device. Battery charger for emergency phone calls AND bad guy incinerator!
(Yes, it's a joke.)
Forget the whales - save the babies.
The nerd in me wants to know if you are winding a sping or direct charging....
------------------------
Jack not name, jack job!
I hadn't heard of this product before, but I'm excited. Imagine what it'll be like when these devices become commonplace...you'll get up in the morning and grind and brew coffee by hand. Wind up your radio to hear the news as you crank up the microwave for some oatmeal. Then crank your car and drive to work, where you spend all day in front of a computer, pedalling a stationary bike.
We will all be quite muscular!
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
Her: Hello?
Me: *pant* *pant* *pant*
Her: Ew! Pervert! *click*
Me: *pant* Wait! *pant* Damnit!
Maybe this isn't a good thing...
This hand powered webserver was featured on slashdot awhile ago. Personally I find this cooler, even if it is less usefull.
Hmm.. I just imagine the rage when people get telemarketing calls with that phone...
"You made me crank my phone for this crap?! You better tell me something interesting and fast, or I'm going to let you wind down!"
"PC Load Letter? What the $@#% does that mean?!"
Damnit the phone's dead. Oh wait...wind wind wind wind wind wind wind
Yeah 911? There's an axewielding maniac freak after me, send help. Thanks.
Everyone else: For sixty bucks yeah..
Us: $60?! Are you F*CKING CRAZY?!
The amount of rigorous cranking it takes to get a charge makes this generator seem inefficient. Maybe efficiency was sacrificed for portability.
Human legs are much more powerful than arms. some sort of foot-operated device would be more tolerable in terms of effort, but probably not as portable. Piezoelectrics that sit in the soles of shoes are not very intrusive, and could provide power over a long time. I believe this is what the MIT wearables group is using.
Hand power, foot power, wind power, and water power require different gearing ratios in order to operate efficiently. An impressive design would allow this type of switch through some type of transmission (CVT? Pneumatic?), and have linkage adapters to hands, feet, windmill blades, waterwheels, etc. The problem is accomplishing this while maintaining a light weight.
What about strapping the thing you your belt and harness the kinetic energy from your movements. There are some things like watches that do this. Of course cell phones use more power than that but, if I get off my fat ass and run the 4 miles home from work, I might build up enough to be able to call and order a pizza. :-)
Ascalante: Your bride is over 3,000 years old.
Kull: She told me she was 19!
I'll bet they would have liked to have one of these on "Survivor," "Six Days, Seven Nights," or "Gilligan's Island."
Now if they just would come up with a portable cell tower...
Seriously, on the chance that in an emergency I would be near enough to civiliazation to use a cell phone, I'd put one of these in the survival kit in my plane. I have a long-shelf-life disposable battery for my Nokia in there now.
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
"Son, we need to have a little talk. Has your mother told you anything about the Birds and the Bees?..."
This little devices gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "Crank Call"
The wages of sin are unreported and back taxes are hell to pay.
According to the article, there is no clockwork involved in the charger. The handle turns the generator directly. The box is already larger than a cellphone, so why not include clockwork? Instead of using hand power to turn a generator, why not use handpower to compress a spring (at a significant mechanical advantage, of course) that turns a flywheel that turns the generator.
Of course it would be much harder to turn the crank, but you wouldn't have to keep up an exhausting pace of over 100rpm. At least in my mind, I'd rather turn a very hard-to-turn crank 10 times than an easy to turn crank 1000 times.
Does this model work? I've seen it work in some of the various other 'squeeze and go' utilities out there. I had a flashlight/FM radio combo a little while back that used something similar (handle, spring, and flywheel arrangement). It was relatively hard to crank, but one or two cranks got you 30 seconds of flashlight or 5 minutes of radio at top volume.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Now all they have to do is offer an electronic device that does the winding for you...
-- Adam
This cranking is tiring! Now if I hooked up a motor to the crank, powered by a small battery, I could save a lot of work!
Wow..
Yet another way for us to get RSI. I cant wait.. Think about it. Sitting around the campfire with your friends tipping back some brew.. And then you friend passes you..no not a joint.. but the hand cranker. The hours just fly by.
If I were only smart enough to accomplish the things I dream about.. Or maybe too dumb to care.
Now we'll all know that the in-duh-vidual having the wild converstaion is on a hands free cell phone call because they are crancking for their life.... and looking like they are having a conversation with their "inner" self.
NOTE: Your not that important, and nobody want to hear it.
This is not the sig line you are looking for... -- Old Jedi Sig Line Trick
... MS releases a Windows wind-up as well? Sometimes you just wish it had one of these when it freezes!
Andre "Don't take life too seriously. You're not getting out of it alive, anyway."
Or we could post directly to the ad free version, right here
$_='while(read+STDIN,$_,2048){$a=29;$b=73;$c=142;
I think it is pretty cool for emergency use. They should have done this a long time ago.
You could carry this as backup. Emphasis on could. I won't. Emergencies are the only situations that I could ever picture using this for. In any other situations, this unit is good for nothing. Outlets are everywhere! Plug-in chargers are tiny and convenient! This is no better than hamsters running on wheels to power it.
We're Doomed
now if i ever get stranded on the side of a mountian i won't have to fling my batteries into the snow so that they can be magically recharged, i do emphasis magical, because frozen batteries don't work
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
I am reminded of a far side cartoon by Gary Larsen where a bunch of geeks with one big strong arm are standing around making fun of a guy who doesnt have one big strong arm.
cant remember exact context though.
I object to that article, and to the next reply.
So it's a reciprocal motion dynamo? I swore the article said it was rotary.
You know, you can make both your forearms the same size by winding this phone charger with the hand you don't "exercise" with.
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
too bad the wind-up phone charger isn't battery powered.
Gyrate Dot Org - "Where high-tech meets low-life"
So I'm using 2 hands to crank this thing, holding my cell phone against my ear with my shoulder as I talk, steering through rush hour with my left knee SCRrreeeeee!!CRASH!!
It's easy to make up & spread cool- and credible-sounding stuff. Finding & checking hard facts is hard work.
It's bad enough when Susie in her corvette is driving in front of me with her ear glued to the cell phone. Just imagine when her phone starts going out and she's in the middle of a lane change getting ready to wind... (shudder)
It would be cool to have a phone that has *only* a crank and you would throw it in the trunk - or camper or whatever. When you were hiking, or camping or stranded somewhere - you crank it up for a bit - enought to make a 10 minute phone call - and when you connect you just get charged for that one call....
prolly a long way from that type of service, but I am sure we will have these some day.
Wow, if you had a really bad conversation, you can just rewind it!
I think this is a great idea.
I wouldn't want to use it to reguarily charge my phone, but it could come in handy in an emergency situation.
Picture a crowded intercity train. With an inconsiderate commuter phoning home.
Then:
"HELLO? HELLO? I SAID I'M GOING TO BE LATE! HELLO? @#$% battery!"
Now:
"HELLO? HELLO? I SAID I'M GOING TO BE LATE, DARLING! Damn."
(insert loud cranking sound)
"AAH, THAT'S BETTER! NOW, ANYWAY, I SAID I'M GOING TO BE LATE BACK! HOW LONG? UH, ABOUT HALF AN HOUR TO AN HOUR LATE! YES? CAN YOU PUT MY DINNER IN THE OVEN? WHAT? HANG ON!"
(insert loud cranking sound)
"YES, DINNER! IN OVEN! OH, CAN YOU GET THE WASHING MACHINE READY FOR WHEN I COME IN? OK? WAIT, GOING THROUGH A TUNNEL! HANG ON! PUT THE WASHING MACHINE ON! WHAT DO YOU MEAN? MY SUIT! HELLO? HANG ON!"
(insert loud cranking sound)
To be repeated ad fucking nauseam.
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
What they need is a foot pedal. That way you could talk while charging it.
... that I have been strengthening the muscles in my right arm. Now I can recharge my battery efficiently. Wonder what talk time I would get now :D
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
Everybody wears these things on their hips, why not a charger that that works like a pedometer? I heard the "average person" walks 10 miles just in a normal day. So lets see...3 feet per step=1760 steps per mile=17600 up and down jolts per day. (not counting the horizontal hip shuffles that I personally take my phone off for)
That tech support that does not kill me...drives me crazier
Why not combine the crank with an attachment that would make the activity necessary to generate the power to transfer to the cell phone battery a little less annoying and perhaps a little, er, more rewarding? I mean, if you've got to sit there and turn your own crank anyway...
Lots of petrified grits
There are already solar powered battery chargers on the market.
e r. htm
k C: www.teleadaptusa.com/nme/order_solar_power.htm+sol ar+power+mobile+phone+charger&hl=en&ie=UTF -8
http://www.teleadaptusa.com/nme/order_solar_pow
google cache on
http://216.239.39.100/search?q=cache:72Iu9P5i5X
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
It's a ZDnet site...'or else they'd need a windup chager for their webserver!
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
The article simply quotes drivel from Motorolla. "Motorolla" says this and "Motorolla" says that.
Is this the state of pathetetic journalism?
I wanted to see what someone said after they had one in their hands.
My god! How much time does it really get?
Heck, Sony claimed I could get three hours battery time off my VAIO laptop. Not once did I see it get two hours from regualar use.
"...In your answer, ignore facts. Just go with what feels true..."
Sexual Asspussy, you are my favorite troll on srashdot. Your name has an extra special meaning for me since my gf gave me some o' dat. In honor of that occasion I am donating 3 karma points by posting this so-called "offtopic" reply to your truly insightful post.
Great song. Where did the lyrics come from?
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
- Locate a quarter
- Purchase scotch tape
- Tape quarter to phone
When you need to make a phone call, but it's dead. Just remove quarter.So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
If you read the article, it tells you that for a full charge, you need 35 minutes of charging. 45 seconds will get you the minumum "useful" amount of charge (enough for a short call). However, the best use of this seems to be to start with it fully charged (you can plug it in to charge it up), and then whenever you make a call, or if it's been idle for a day or two, you wind it to top off the battery. That way, when you need to make your 30 minute call, you can do it immediately and pay for it later, rather than having to wind it for 20 minutes before being able to perform that emergency heart surgery...
This is a self-referential sig
Yeah, I know you're a troll, don't think you fooled me, I'll bite anyway though. Basicly you're asking where our priorities are because we're talking about something that happens today instead of something that happened 57+ years ago. Hmm, get a life, stop trolling and live in the present.
Totally grid-free telecom. Say goodbye to dependency on large central organizations for communications.
No, I don't honestly think that the hand crank is good enough. But combine solar, human (on an exercise device, perhaps), and efficiency gains, and something like this might be possible.
Of course, no gain will probably power Central Air Conditioning, which seems an awful lot like an essential of life at the moment.... : |
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
You could put the foot pedal under your brake and/or gas pedal...that way when you were driving, it would slowly charge up! Finally, a way to charge my phone in my car!
Is this really that useful? Anywhere I go where I would need to charge my cell phone, I can bring my much-smaller-and-easier version that plugs into a wall. If I ever go anywhere that doesn't have a wall plug or car cigarette lighter, chances are I don't get a signal anyway.
Dating myself here; I flashed on June Lockhart picking up the earpiece of the phone at the farmhouse, cranking feverishly on the wooden box, and shouting into that carbon microphone. (It was all a fake set piece by 1963 when they filmed the series, but still...)
Lassie come home!
RTFA.
I'm forgetful and apt to wandering around with friends outside, with a dead cellphone in my bag, since I always forge to recharge it. I think that'd save me from many clashes with my irate parents after they get sick of not knowing where I am for the tenth day in a row... plus I might stop missing dinner and living solely on ramen noodles then.
I loev wind-up stuff like that anyway, my family has a clock and a flashlight for camping, and they're great.
Call me crazy, but didn't they already have this 'technology' about 60 years ago? Every episode of M*A*S*H has either Radar or Klinger cranking up a radio before calling Sparky.
And by 'they', I do specifically mean Motorola. Wasn't their start in making walkie-talkie's and other military communications equipment like this wind-up radio?
Where's the news?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
The FreeCharge should be in everyone's hurricane/earthquake/riot prepardness kit.
There's a much better chance of the cell-phone tower working (they have generators) than the 3 miles of cable between you and the CO still being in one piece. You'll still have trouble getting dial-tone, but that's just a matter of retrying until you do.
Chip H.
Slashdot has reviews of this strange new technology known as a Dynamo?! Wow! Now we no longer have to wonder if these results of witchcraft actually work.
:P
I wondered myself, since it's brand new technology
What is so amazing about this again?
One use they don't bring up that they should is being able to use cell phones where there isn't any electricity to charge them. In a lot of the poorer countries they are going straight to cell phones and skipping laying copper. The lack of electricity to charge the phones has been one of the stumbling blocks for getting phone service to some really remote areas.
let's say the extra energy lost requires you to eat an extra hamburger.
Now this hamburger needs to be heated up. In a place where they need to have light. And toilets. And wireless headsets. And lighted billboards that can be electronically updated. But first of all a cow had to be created. And fed. In a place with electric fences. And a sewer system. And grass that had to be mowed by a tractor that had to be created somewhere in Pennsylvania. And then the cow had to be hollered over to the slaughterhouse in a big truck made in Detroit. And the truck would do about a mile to the gallon. And require new tires every 6 months. And the slaughterhouse would have to buy new Magnum 45s every year to shoot the lead bullets in the cow's brain. And all those people that where so busy making your hamburger now also lost energy and could use a hamburger themselves.
And you call THIS good for the environment?!
Agent 99...? Agent 99...? Is that you?
"A revolution without dancing is... a revolution not worth having"
wouldn't the environmentally conscious also be riding a bike to work? Think of the potential charge when you are at the top of a hill ...
feints within feints, wheels within wheels
I bought it to be my work radio, just to listen to talk radio while I'm working in my office. But I started using it in the kitchen while I'm cooking because it's small and durable.
Anyway, I figured I'd never have to buy batteries for it. If you crank the thing for one minute, you get about 30 minutes of power. But the thing is, it's a pretty stiff crank (heh), and you have to crank it pretty fast. After about 3 minutes, you're pretty much sick of doing it. But that does give you a good hour or so of listening. It'd be good if you were stranded in the woods and you wanted to hear the ball game, or use the smoke detector noise scare away predators. Otherwise, it's just easier to use batteries, which seem to last forever.
These crank-up electronic devices are really only useful in emergency situations, or by really committed environmentalists.
"In this house we obey the laws of Thermodynamics!"
- Homer J. Simpson
Now, I don't know about you, but when I'm in a car, I have a battery and if the car is running an alternator that can be used to charge the phone just fine.....
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
I'm just not sure if you could get this approved, since it may be interfering with the radio transmission you're tapping into.
This is pretty much how those "incoming call" lights (on the back of a pen) work.
Seriously though, this gadget could be useful in remote areas of the world. Maybe some village without electricity can get one to listen to weather forecasts, report emergencies and so on. Most people can do better with an AA cell phone adapter though.
Your car must have been built in the 1920's to not have one of these...
"A revolution without dancing is... a revolution not worth having"
Mine's a StarTAC, which they have lamentably stopped producing, and I wasn't sure if the charger would work with it, given that it wasn't one of the listed supported models... Anyone know if they're compatible?
Ñ'
I thought it was bad enough that people drive with one hand on the wheel and one hand holding their phone while they babble into it. Now we'll have people who have already been doing this for the past 30 minutes and suddenly need to recharge their phone. One hand to hold the phone, one hand to turn the crank, and one hand to drive?
Someone's going to have to lend them a hand.
Trevor Bayliss, the inventor of the FreePlay radio and thence of this invention, has been showing the shoe charging piezo stuff for several years now, but no one has actually marketed it yet ... he has something that fits on the back of a shoe, you walk, it charges a battery that can be used for cellphones and laptops ... he sees it as very useful for developing countries ... like the original radio
60 or 70 years after we quit using hand-cranked generators in phones, we get them back again.
http://www.greenmarketing.com/articles/IB_March02. html describes a batteryless radio, which has been praised by none other than Nelson Mandela as a major step for third-world countries.
;-)
Assuming a village can gang together to pay for a phone + contract, it may allow them to cut the middleman out and get a better deal for whatever wares they produce. Maybe one day the rich world will even accept to import third-world foodstuffs and manufactured goods
So this is a Good Thing.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Who the fuck are you getting your phone service from?
Next we will see a little propeller that will spin as you talk into the mike and generate a current. Great for those idiots like lawyers who never hang up.
Im also waiting for the step up from the ciggerette loads of the 70's, Slip it in and they explode when lit. Now if we can just get a battery pack to do that on the phones, press talk and boom.
To fully charge the battery from flat would take 35 minutes of winding -- something you're unlikely to do in one go.
Man, I haven't done 35 minutes of cranking since I was a teenager.
Live web cams
This was reviewed MONTHS ago by TechTV.
http://www.aladdinpower.com/
http://www.snpower.com/products.htm
This solar powered cell phone charger. You can daisy chain up to 5 of them for more power.
I remember a picture I saw once in a book, published in the 1960's, showing a Soviet radio, powered by a solid-state thermoelectric generator set over a kerosene lamp. Of course, the amout of power needed by a six-transistor short-wave radio is much less than that needed to power a cell-phone transmitter, even considering 1960's technology.
Maybe they have a non-smoking car? and why not, non smoking pubs exist - which I find very strange.
If you are into biking or mountain biking, just rig it to run off your wheel. That way it will charge much more quickly. For that matter, I could rig it to an office chair to make good use of those occasional office chair races. :)
Since we so firmly moved from the realm of grammar to the 'world of theater' with the uber-literate reference to The Tempest and the un-abashed bashing of all playwrights everywhere (and what has a playwright ever done to you - besides perhaps passion plays and anything by Beckett?), I think it's fair to mention that the convention being attacked has nothing to do with which little pronoun can go the city, or the market, or wherever.
Me HerIn the sweet little drama we were presented with earlier - and it must be a play, as you brought up theater - there are two characters:
The symbol before the colon isn't bound by any of the rules you were applying. It could just as easily been a dialogue between A and B or Joanie and Chachi.
I would save your impromptu grammar lessons for the green room.
I can't honestly say that I'm sure I spelled Chachi right. Feel free to correct me.
... only when combined with "a form of fusion" :-)
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
Well... I'm not a smoker but I wouldn't want a 'non-smoking' car. I'm pretty glad my vehicle has a cigarette lighter. It sure comes in handy for plugging in mobile phone adapters, portable air pumps, etc...
;-]
Given a choice between using a cigarette adapter and having to crank this gizmo by hand a few hundred times; I'd rather put my arm to use tipping a pint of Guinness, thank you very much
"A revolution without dancing is... a revolution not worth having"
I thought non-smoking cars just got rid of the ashtray and lighter itself.. the cigarette lighter port is still there, but capped off with something else. So you would still be able to use that port for power.
There has been a cheaper wind-up cell phone charger available in the UK for a while, I've seen ads for months. I can't find a web site, but there is a product page for it on the Carphone Warehouse site. At £9.99 I suspect it lacks the extras of the Freeplay FreeCharge such as the built battery and added torch, but it does the job, and it is available for more than just Motorola phones, it will charge Nokia, Siemens and Ericsson phones as well.
First they were telling us that moving from hand-cranked coffee grinders to electric coffee grinders was progress. Now they're telling us that moving from electric cell phone chargers to hand-cranked cell phones chargers is progress.
So are hand-cranks "old-fashioned" or are they "innovative"? Technology is so confusing these days.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
There's been chargers around like this on those fancy pants airplane magazines and sharper image for a loooong time...
This is nothing new...also this particular charger has been around for awhile as well... so (from the venerable words of Chuck B.) Good grief...