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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.
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"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.
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
The nerd in me wants to know if you are winding a sping or direct charging....
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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...
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.
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.
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!
"This is nothing more than a dynamo flashlight or disaster radio without the bulb or radio."
What kind of long distance rates are you getting with your dynamo flashlight?
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
Or we could post directly to the ad free version, right here
$_='while(read+STDIN,$_,2048){$a=29;$b=73;$c=142;
The point isn't to charge it to capacity, the point is to get your phone running long enough to place a call if your battery goes low.
I don't get many calls on my cell phone, so I get lazy about charging it. If I could wind it up a few times and get 10-15 minutes of talk time (which sounds reasonable based on the article), then it saves my booty if I get stranded or something.
You're operating on impractical assumptions there. Heh.
I am reminded of a far side cartoon by Gary Larsen where a bunch of geeks with one big strong arm are standing around making fun of a guy who doesnt have one big strong arm.
cant remember exact context though.
So it's a reciprocal motion dynamo? I swore the article said it was rotary.
You know, you can make both your forearms the same size by winding this phone charger with the hand you don't "exercise" with.
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
"Uh, not to repeat myself but... Almost usless news connected to products yet again"
Is it wrong of me to take pleasure in seeing posts like these? All of these "I dont get it therefore it is stupid" posts make me feel 733t. Heh.
It would be cool to have a phone that has *only* a crank and you would throw it in the trunk - or camper or whatever. When you were hiking, or camping or stranded somewhere - you crank it up for a bit - enought to make a 10 minute phone call - and when you connect you just get charged for that one call....
prolly a long way from that type of service, but I am sure we will have these some day.
Picture a crowded intercity train. With an inconsiderate commuter phoning home.
Then:
"HELLO? HELLO? I SAID I'M GOING TO BE LATE! HELLO? @#$% 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.
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..."
- 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
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.
What kind of long distance rates are you getting with your dynamo flashlight?
Free, if you know Morse Code.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
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!
It's not new technology...
...and functionally useless ways!"
... powering your mobile phone long enough to call for help without the need of a power outlet is functionally useless, but dynamo flashlights and radios are okay?
So?
"...it's merely applying technology in new..."
Yes, that is called an invention.
So
OoooooooKay! Never mind that lotsa people go camping, or break down on the highway, or forget to take their charger when they travel. Heh. It's funny how the less somebody knows, the stronger their opinions are.
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.
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?!
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.
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
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'
60 or 70 years after we quit using hand-cranked generators in phones, we get them back again.
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.
... only when combined with "a form of fusion" :-)
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
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