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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
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...
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.
"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?
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.
What they need is a foot pedal. That way you could talk while charging it.
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
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.
When you need to make a phone call, but it's dead. Just remove quarter.
You forgot a step...
4. Bum another quarter off somebody because phone calls cost $.50
"Derp de derp."
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?!