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DoCoMo Will Launch Fuel-Cell Mobile Phones By 2005
prostoalex writes "Japan's major telecom provider NTT DoCoMo plans to use fuel cells for its 3G phones. 'Users of cellphones with a fuel-cell battery would carry a cigarette lighter-type fuel container to refuel the battery', says Reuters."
DoCoMo to launch fuel cell-run handsets by 2005
.N225 , which rose 1.16 percent.
Thu June 5, 2003 06:07 AM ET
TOKYO, June 5 (Reuters) - NTT DoCoMo Inc 9437.T said on Thursday it expects to launch a mobile phone powered by a fuel-cell battery for extended hours of use as early as 2004, a potential boost for its high-speed third-generation (3G) service.
DoCoMo's 3G service, which offers video conferencing and speedy access to the Web, had until recently met a cool reception due mainly to the poor battery life of its handsets.
User growth of the 3G service has picked up pace since DoCoMo, Japan's top cellphone operator, launched new handsets with longer battery life earlier this year.
But the battery duration of those new models is still substantially shorter than the topline 2G models.
"If everything goes smoothly, we will see the first model next year or the year after that," NTT DoCoMo President Keiji Tachikawa told a news conference.
Users of cellphones with a fuel-cell battery would carry a cigarette lighter-type fuel container to refuel the battery.
Tachikawa said its 3G subscribers totalled about 480,000 as of Wednesday, up from 421,000 users at the end of April.
DoCoMo aims to win a total 1.46 million 3G subscribers by the end of the current business year to March 2004.
Japanese mobile phone operators have high hopes that the advanced 3G service will become the next growth driver as the conventional mobile phone market nears saturation.
Tachikawa said basic functionality of 3G phones is expected to catch up with that of the 2G models next year.
He also said, however, the company has no intention of shifting all its subscribers to the 3G service, called FOMA, from its PDC operation, Japan's dominant 2G format, in the near future.
"We have 40 million PDC users. Demand for that service is still bigger than that for FOMA," Tachikawa said. "PDC and FOMA will co-exist in the next 10 years or so." DoCoMo said separately that technical glitches had affected its first megapixel phones, made by a joint venture between Sony Corp 6758.T and Sweden's Ericsson ERICb.ST , marring the debut of a new photo-phone model with the world's highest resolution.
DoCoMo, which sold about 40,000 units of the camera-phone on the day of its launch on Wednesday, said e-mail software on the model, which has a resolution of 1.3 million pixels, could freeze up when a message is typed, under certain conditions.
The company said the problem could be solved by a software upgrade and that it did not plan to carry out a recall.
Shares in DoCoMo closed down 0.38 percent at 265,000 yen, underperforming the Nikkei average
There is no god
Everyone who's asking about the potential battery life/ polution from/ etc the fuel cells might like to read this article in scientific american. It's pretty old but gives a fair idea of what the technology involves. And heres a couple more.
:)
Basically they have the potential for much longer battery life (magnitudes greater than lithium) and produce water and C02 as waste products. and cheap vodka could potentially be used for the fuel
Give a hand, not a hand-out.
Actually, there are three classes of Bluetooth devices, with different power levels and accordingly different effective ranges: class 3 with 1 mW has a range of about 10 cm, class 2 with 2.5 mW has a range of about 10 metres, and finally class 1 with 100 mW has a range of 100 metres.
HTH.
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Actually, fuel cells are remarkably efficient. I have seen specs on some fuel cells that list 90% efficiency, while I've seen most listed between 40 and 60 percent. Not very much heat produced at all.
President Bush on Thursday stopped by a booth by MTI MicroFuel Cells Inc. of Albany in Washington, D.C., and made a cell phone call from a phone powered by MTI's direct methanol micro fuel-cell system, according to the company.
Thursday was Feb 6, 2003.
maybe we should all look at this ?
http://www.howstuffworks.com/fuel-cell.htm
"il y a`, que toute ide`e publique, toute convention recue, est une sottise, car elle a convenue au plus grand nombre.