Nokia: the Sun Can't Charge Your Phone

itwbennett writes "Nokia's research into solar-powered cell phones ended with a (barely audible) thud. Under the best of conditions researchers were able 'to harvest enough energy to keep the phone on standby mode but with a very restricted amount of talk time,' Nokia wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. Not surprisingly, the prototype phone, which had a solar panel on the back cover, performed better in Kenya than in other testing locations, like southern Sweden and the Arctic Circle."

Comments

it should have been

[bugs2squash]

a tablet then

Re:it should have been

[davester666]

or switch to Intel chips. I keep reading how Intel is just about to ship a really low-power chipset for cell phones in just a few months.

Of course, I've been reading this for about 5 years now.

Re:it should have been

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait just a second here. My Sun Blade 2500 workstation charges my phone just fine, thank you very much. All I have to do is plug the cable into the USB port and It Just Works. What a stupid, misleading article title.

Re:it should have been

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be better to have the solar as an alternative charging option. As for low power chips until solar technology improves it's doubtful that we will see amny devices like these. It would be better to use body heat or momentum to charge these devices.

Re:it should have been

[StripedCow]

Perhaps a 10" tablet with a 1" screen. Power consumption increases with screen size.

Re:it should have been

[cvtan]

or a Prius

Re:it should have been

[unixisc]

That's what I thought. While solar energy won't do a good job in charging a phone, an unixstation will. So Sun Microsystems was greater than the sun when it comes to charging electronic devices. Even Oracle realized it, which is why they acquired Sun Microsystems, but didn't acquire the original sun - won't know what to do w/ it.

Re:it should have been

[TheRaven64]

Active power consumption does, however standby consumption does not. And since most tablets don't maintain a connection to a cell tower when in standby mode, their standby consumption is even lower.

Why did they think this would work?

[TWX]

My phone resides in my pocket. Even if I left it on the dash of my car, the casing is only so large, even on my Galaxy S II. I don't see how even the most efficient of solar panels in the most effective of locations would provide enough power.

It's noble of them to try, but at the moment I'm not surprised this was the outcome.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[bmuon]

No idea. Mechanical energy -motion and/or sound waves- seems a more likely source of power for a phone.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[timholman]

My phone resides in my pocket. Even if I left it on the dash of my car, the casing is only so large, even on my Galaxy S II. I don't see how even the most efficient of solar panels in the most effective of locations would provide enough power.

It's noble of them to try, but at the moment I'm not surprised this was the outcome.

I don't doubt that Nokia's engineers did some quick calculations and told their managers that solar charging wouldn't be practical before this project even got started.

And then the managers said: "It doesn't matter. It'll look great in a press release. The environmentalists will love it. Do it anyway."

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Would it not make sense for them to still use this idea to some extent, though? Put some solar panels on the phone just to give that extra little bit of battery life. It would probably increase the fluctuation of how long one charge will take you on the thing, but on days that it gets plenty of sun, you could probably get some noticeable effect of this sort of thing. As another poster said, mechanical energy might be more likely to use for this, but what about both? You'd still want to charge your phone, but these ideas could lead to longer battery life, at least.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[viperidaenz]

You can get 0.5W panels about the size of a smart phone for $2.00. considering they only have a ~5w/hr battery it should be possible to get an 80% charge in 10 hours. The problem being that solar power drops significantly when not in direct sunlight, partially covered, through glass, not perpendicular... etc.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[digsbo]

No need. Have you used a Nokia low-end phone lately? They can go two weeks without a charge. Seriously. I just lent a friend a 2320 for use while in the USA and it lasted a full 15 days. And yes, they made calls on it! Amazing.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[J0nne]

Some places don't have reliable power, and it would be pretty beneficial for Nokia if they could sell a phone that had this advantage over other phones aimed at the 3rd world market. As it is now some people now charge their phones by going to special charging shops where you hand over the phone and they hook it up to a charger fed by a generator.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Pete Venkman]

Do we work for the same company?

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[steelfood]

Where this might work is for the outdoorsy people who are in the woods, but not out of coverage (especially 911 coverage). I know people already bring portable solar recharging stations along with them. Something like this helps by increasing the amount of other equipment that could be included in the trip.

Cell phones need to be fairly low-powered to be powered directly by straight sunlight. There isn't much surface area for the solar cell, and the efficiency goes down when holding it to the ear. Not to mention, the efficiency isn't amazing to begin with, and degrades with use due to scratches, drops, and other normal usage effects.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Korin43]

Would it not make sense for them to still use this idea to some extent, though? Put some solar panels on the phone just to give that extra little bit of battery life.

It's probably cheaper and more effective to just give it a bigger battery.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[crazycheetah]

But try doing that on any modern smartphone... Compared to today's smartphones, even the old dumbphones of years passed didn't have much of a need for something like this. Now, we're in an age of smartphones that are having less and less expectation to even make it through the day. My Galaxy Nexus lasts 15-20 hours pretty easily under low to moderate use, but that's terrible compared to the last dumbphone that I had, which I would regularly forget to charge it for a night and not have to worry that it was going to be dead in the morning. Personally, aside from maybe aiming for a dumbphone that wouldn't ever need charged at all, I would see smartphones being a pretty big market for this sort of technology.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Think trickle charge of an off-state phone to send out that emergency SMS/TXT.

Imagine if you were buried in an earthquake with a flat phone... Oh never mind...

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[MichaelSmith]

You can get cheap solar battery chargers. In the right climate this phone might charge okay with one of those.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention, what percentage of the time is a celphone in a place it can practically recieve sunlight, if you are going to do solar, you have to at least wire it to your whole shirt, hat, or something that has a decent surface area, and does not sit in your pockets

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[khallow]

Mechanical energy -motion and/or sound waves- seems a more likely source of power for a phone.

They don't have the power density of a solar cell and the mechanical energy approach would add considerable mass.

Looks to me like they'll just have to figure out how to make a much lower power cellphone. That process will be limited by the need of the phone to produce sound that one can hear.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Were you there for the mass sponge migration too?

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[sortius_nod]

This is probably a smarter option.

Even if you can't charge your phone fully with tech like this, at least you can extend the standby time.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[hedwards]

You'd probably be better off fashioning a generator out of a washing machine motor and a few small components than hoping to have enough sun when you need it to power the phone.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[ewieling]

My Motorola V3M has the battery life of a smart phone and the features of a dumb phone. Worst Phone Ever.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[pz]

I'm thinking the limitation will be the amount of power used when communicating with the local network. When transmitting, cell phones blast out a fair bit of RF power, on the order of 1 W, if memory serves. Audio, on the other hand, is easy to do with 10 mW or so when the speaker is near one's ear. Moreover, even in standby mode, phones still periodically connect to the local network which requires bursts of high power.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Anonymous Coward]

The energy burned walking up 14 flights of stairs is enough to charge a phone fully.
W = F * dx = 65kg * 9.81m/s^2 * 10feet/story = 1944 Joules
3.7 Volts * 2.0 Amp-hours / 1944 Joules = 13.7 stories

This assumes that the generator is 100% efficient and that you want to fully charge a phone with a 2000mAh LiIon battery.

That's not bad at all though, if a handcrank could be made small enough.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Charliemopps]

Stop spreading your right-wing, capitalist 1% lies. iPhones work 30% better off of solar power and organic tomatoes cure cancer. It's a fact.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[GreatBunzinni]

...or, you know, sell a separate battery and a stationary solar powered battery charger. That would avoid the size constraints on the solar panel and the exposure problem.

The only problem with that obvious approach is that such a charger couldn't be used to sell expensive phones under the pretext of Nokia being environmentally-friendly and all the associated fraudulent propaganda. ...and so the project is scrapped.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Jarik C-Bol]

the same way self winding watches work. Your arm is not a windmill either. In this case, a small magnet, in a tube, wrapped in a coil, such that when the user walks, the magnet slides from one end of the tube to the other, and back again. The real trick is to figure out how to arrange this little setup to maximize the number of times the process occurs, with minimal movement.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes I miss battery life. I remember my first brick I owned I took it to America for two weeks and didn't bring a charger. I got angry that it ran out in 1.5 weeks.

My N900 in comparison, died in about 8 hours under heavy web use and maybe 15 hours with little use.

My Galaxy S with CM7 lasts around 10 hours under heavy web use and maybe 2 days under very light use. >_

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[artor3]

I have a portable radio/flashlight from LL Bean that has a little handcrank which can be used to either charge the device itself or any other device connected via USB. Twenty minutes of turning the crank takes my phone from dead to ~30% charge, is not at all tiring, and has the added advantage of working at night. I think that would be a better solution for third world phone charging than solar cells. Maybe even put the crank right on the phone, though that might make it too clunky.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Fluffeh]

such a charger couldn't be used to sell expensive phones under the pretext of Nokia being environmentally-friendly and all the associated fraudulent propaganda. ...and so the project is scrapped.

I actually don't see why they killed it. I would have paid an extra hundred bucks to have a phone with a longer battery life. My Galaxy S II barely gives me a day, if with a solar panel it would give me a day and a half, at least it would last without problems until I get home from work. Worth it in my books.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some places don't have reliable power, and it would be pretty beneficial for Nokia if they could sell a phone that had this advantage over other phones aimed at the 3rd world market.

... because there is a lot of money in these places?

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[ColdWetDog]

You don't have electricity where you live? You can get a USB charger for household mains, cars, boats, airplanes - all manner of civilized accoutrements. You could even charge your phone while wasting your time here at Slashdot! At least you'd be doing something useful.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Goaway]

You're thinking of this as "walking up 14 flights of stairs" but that is entirely misleading.

Since you said "small hand crank", what you should imagine is this: Tie a rope to a person, then use a small hand crank to winch them up to the 14th floor of a building.

It probably doesn't sound as good any more.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Anonymous Coward]

They killed it because it didn't work. Didn't you even read the summary or the article title? Although they should have been able to figure out that it wouldn't have worked based off calculations before they left the office. I'm cynical so rather than give them credit for testing prototypes, I think they must have known it wasn't going to work, but tested it anyway as a PR stunt.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[demachina]

Adafruit has this, sort of, would need some packaging, its geared towards hardware hackers, Solar LiPo charger plus Minty Boost

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[jimmydigital]

Your arm is not a windmill either.

I like to stand in front of windmills to cool off...

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[jimmydigital]

You can get 0.5W panels about the size of a smart phone for $2.00. considering they only have a ~5w/hr battery it should be possible to get an 80% charge in 10 hours.

Most places you only get about 6 hours of good solar power.. you also have to keep in mind that the conversion to charge isn't 100% efficient and the phone will be on.. even in standby drawing power. Now I have seen a 5 watt 12v panel that's about half the size of a sheet of paper that would work well.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Anonymous Coward]

WINDMILLS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY. GOOD NIGHT.

Morbo feels sorry for the idiots who implemented the Slashdot filter.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[poetmatt]

Why should you need to be able to put the phone into a positive charge, aka "lots of power"?? Generating enough power to simply neutralize standby or even diminish it is incredibly significant by itself and could probably add anywhere from small amounts of time to substantial ones merely by basically adding a small amount of charge from solar energy.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Darinbob]

That sounds like a great company actually in that the management actually heard and believed the engineers (even if they went ahead with the plans). More typically the management just goes ahead and starts the project rolling full steam before asking engineers if it's possible.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[trawg]

Not really related, but I recall John Carmack recently posted on Twitter saying that a cell phone will use less than $1 of grid electricity over their lifespan (based on this calculation).

Interesting insight into how little power a cell phone uses compared to other devices!

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Anonymous Coward]

hmm, must have been the same guys who endorsed wind energy...

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[joocemann]

It has utility: in a rescue situation, it could charge all day if only to provide even a one minute 911 call.... obviously only if in range. Ive been in a situation where the last bit of charge on a cellphone was the factor that led to survival.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[tragedy]

They killed it because it barely provided enough power to keep the phone in standby, if that. That's not the same as not working. The GP was interested in anything that would prolong battery life. Whether or not it would usefully prolong battery life is another question. It depends on the users usage pattern. Someone who doesn't actually spend a lot of time on the phone might find this very useful to their battery life. Someone who uses their phone a lot, on the other hand, would probably use up their battery in very close to the same amount of time.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Grishnakh]

Maybe they had some dumbasses working there who have the same idea as many people, that you can power an electric car with solar panels. You see it here all the time: "Why doesn't Toyota put solar panels on the roof of the Prius so it doesn't need gas at all?", and this is supposed to be filled with tech people, not morons who don't understand basic physics.

Either that, or maybe too many of the aforementioned people were bugging them, so they decided to go ahead and waste a little time on a test to prove what they already knew, that it wouldn't work.

I'm all for renewable energy, but you have to realize there's physical limitations, and you're not going to get any appreciable power out of a solar panel the size of a phone. A smaller one will power a calculator, but that's about it, and calculators don't have power-hungry CPUs, power-hungry backlit LCD touchscreens, and power-hungry radio transmitters.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[517714]

Venezuela springs to mind. They used to export power (also food), now they import and roll blackouts. Viva la revolucion! And yes, there is a lot of money still.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Grishnakh]

Sounds suspiciously low, unless the phone is thrown away after only a year.

But did he account for all the power used by the phone's charger as it's left plugged in all the time, even if the phone isn't attached?

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just buy an extra battery instead of a bigger battery. For about 10 bucks on ebay you can get a wall charger and a spare battery and never have to charge your phone again. I wake up in the morning and put a fresh battery in, then when I get home from work I just swap the batteries out again before heading out on the town.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[viperidaenz]

That's why I said 80%. The 5whr capcity is a 1350mah battery typical of an android or iphone. feature phones typically have half that capacity and 5 - 10 days standby time. My trusty old samsung lasts 7 days between charges.
The panel i quoted above is 5.5v @ 100ma, standard nokia wall chargers are 5v @ 350ma. Its also only 17% efficient, if you paid more you could probably find something 20% efficient. That would give you 10% more power output.

In theory it could work, the only way to know for sure in practice is to test it - I guess thats why nokia thought it was worth a shot

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[timeOday]

If you were right, they'd go ahead and built the phone even though it doesn't work.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Brett Buck]

All of which are facts that can be determined in 30 seconds of hand calculation assuming (as they do) they know the power it draws. I can't see why they would actually bother to build it.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[quacking duck]

Don't know about other phone chargers, but my iPhone USB charger block registers 0W on my watt meter when the cable is plugged in but no iPhone is attached.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Com on! This is to be put *on the phone*, so that it is suppose to augment battery power when the user is USING the phone.

Average phone has about 40cm2, maybe a little more maybe a little less. Solar irradiance is 1000W/m3 or 1000W/10000cm2, so 0.5W/cm2. That means 20W peak, 10W average if the phone is *directly pointed towards the sun* with 100% efficiency. Now, you can get panels that are 20% efficient, mabe 30% if you want to pay a lot. So that is 3W *if directly pointed towards the sun*.

So how much do you get if not pointed towards the sun? probably less than 1%. so 0.1W or less?

Anyway, it is ALL garbage if you think this is "green". Solar panels on devices like this will never pay for themselves, EVER. Never mind that average lifespan of a cell phone is not 30 years...

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[nedlohs]

Over 3.5 years for me (by the numbers in that link) - my phone does a discharge/charge cycle once a day basically.

It's hardly suspiciously low.

My phone has a battery in it with 3.7V and 1300mah. My old high school memories tell me that P=IV, so 1300mah*3.7V = 4.8Wh. My electricity bill says that the distribution charge is $0.0654531250/kWh and the energy charge is $0.113187500/kWh (more expensive than the original calc used, and by lord how many decimal places do they want to use...)

So one charge would cost if that was the price of abstract electricity:
(0.0654531250+0.113187500)/1000*4.8 = $0.00086

So $1 gets me 1166 charges, at once a day that's 3 years (Wh are likely higher due to the voltage actually being higher when fully charged, but we have enough slop over 3 years to cover that).

The charging efficiency while not 100% is high enough that it is more than covered by the fact my phone doesn't actually get to 0 charge each day - it tends to have 25% or so left.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Grishnakh]

1) Your watt meter probably isn't that accurate at low levels like that.
2) It probably registers everything at some threshold under a watt (assuming it's even that accurate) as "0". But 0.5W 24/7 for a year is still 4383 watt-hours. Sure, it's probably only between $0.44 and $0.66, but it's still enough to dry a load of clothes in a dryer, maybe two. And that's still a good fraction of that supposed $1 lifespan total, for only one year of usage.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[ppanon]

It's more of a pain to change the batteries when you apply those wrappers/protectors that a lot of people seem to use for their smartphones, be it for extra impact protection or for accessorizing.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, but it might if there is enough wind more than 2 meters up to spin the sail arms. Even if there isn't wind at ground level, the spinning windmill arms will produce wind in passing at ground level.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[itsme1234]

Having to wait all night then some big part of the next day (IF it's sunny) doesn't sound such a good plan for a "rescue situation". Now if 90% of the phones would have solar panels on them (while being about the same size/weight as non-solar-panel phones) I would get probably a phone with solar panel "just in case". But if you're planning in advance and there aren't a lot of "solar phones", if any, just get a second battery. It works with your phone and even the cheapest $1-$5 battery on ebay will provide more energy than one week of solar charging.
In fact this is when I decided against small portable solar panels: when I realized that even using them every day for weeks would provide less energy than a similarly sized battery.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[itsme1234]

Your electricity meter itself isn't that accurate either, for a device that can measure multiple kW (even for the smallest apartment) fractions of W are only noise.
0.5W is exaggerated, Nokia specs are (including some very old chargers and these are max values, probably real values are tens of percent lower):

        Nokia Charger AC-3 150 mW
        Nokia Travel Charger AC-4 300 mW
        Nokia Compact Travel Charger AC-5 300 mW
        Nokia Fast Charger AC-8 30 mW

And last but not least: what are you doing keeping your charger plugged 24/7 for years if you care about 50 cents of electricity PER YEAR? Anyway chances are you have devices with much larger standby consumption and you'll be better off disconnecting them either directly or via some extension cord with a switch. You'll also reduce the risk of fires and the risk of damaging something because of some incident on the mains power.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[kjc197]

Well, they do in a way... Windmills turn around because there is wind. He could use that wind to cool off.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[bemymonkey]

You know you can buy solar panels with buffer cells and ~1000mA USB output for about $200, right?

I'm looking at getting this next time I have a little too much cash laying around: http://www.amazon.de/Aurora-Solarladeger%C3%A4te-Handys-iPhone-MP3-Player/dp/B0049U3GQC/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1319908425&sr=8-6

Add a ~5000mAh battery pack (good for about two or three charges of my smartphone) and I'm set for camping, festivals and the like... panel + battery pack are placed in the car during the day, and the phone gets charged off of the (hopefully full) battery pack at night.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Hadlock]

I leave my phone plugged in when I'm not using it, but I miss my old blackberry that I could leave off the charger for a day and a half and still check my email. If I didn't use it at all, it would happily sit there for 2 or 3 days. There's nothing wrong with wanting a more efficient phone. When I bought my android phone I had to buy a car charger and 2-3 extra charging cables, and stuck a spare wall charger in my glove box.
 
At one point they were called "mobile phones". Now they're "you have 45 minutes to get to your next charger before you get a low battery warning".

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. First do it for a low end phone which requires less power like nokia 1208.(Do you think people in 3rd world use smartphone, while they do not earn so much as the cost of smartphone in a year. Who is your end-user)
2. Put horizontal magnet & a vertical magnet (like L) in the phone sides within the phone cover.
3. Add a winder
4. put a solar panel on the back also.
Iam sure with this, a basic phone like 1208 will never need a dead weight battery & 3rd world guys dont speak for hours on phone.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Young Master Ploppy]

I spent 3 weeks in the Himalayas last year, with a Power Monkey solar panel strapped to the back of my pack. I figured the odds of a decent charge were good - we were in direct sun for ~8hrs a day, and the UV at >5000m altitude is seriously intense.

In practise, I usually managed to get enough charge at the end of the day to power up my HTC Desire for about 20mins, with wi-fi turned off and making no calls - essentially using it as a notepad and sending the odd "we're OK!" text to my family. So, not a viable option for anything more than one emergency call, really.

BUT - having said that, up there, there really isn't any other option. Generators at lodges are becoming more common, but it'll cost you 250 rupees for half an hour charge (that's about 2GBP/3USD) in a country where over 30 per cent of Nepalese live below the poverty line of US$12 per person/per month.

When there's no electricity, no landlines, and no way between villages other than long, steep, gruelling high-altitude hikes, and the nearest medical assistance is often over a days hike away, that one emergency mobile phone call can become pretty damn important for the locals. So irrespective of whether it's a desirable lifestyle choice for the first world, THAT's why this research is worth pursuing.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Smartphones just use too much power, unfortunately. I have two phones here, an Android phone whose 2100mAh battery lasts about a day, and a Nokia 1208 whose 700mAh battery lasts a week [both with low usage]. Now, the Android phone can't viably be charged from a phone-sized solar cell -- It'd need about 10Wh to charge it fully, given that charging is not going to be efficient, which given a fairly typical 4 hour exposure to maximum sunlight means it needs a 2.5W peak solar cell, which would equate to a cell at least 4 times as large as the phone. The Nokia 1208, however, is only using about a 20th of the power, so a phone-sized cell (about 0.5W) should be able to charge the ~100mAh usage per day it goes though in less than an hour, assuming optimum exposure.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[ryanov]

One think I miss about my old Treo phones -- they would last a weekend if you were careful how you used them. Nowadays not a chance on my Pre (which I believe has below-average battery life, but still).

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[itsme1234]

Worst is when you have one of the splashproof/waterproof/etc/ phones and you need to fiddle with the small seals/tabs that cover the ports. When you transfer something, when you charge at home, when you use it as navigation unit in the car.
Inductive charging would be a godsend.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[gmhowell]

He just needs to plug it in backwards.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Kjella]

Presumably because it's doing a lot of "smartphony" stuff like checking my email. Going abroad I turned off all data traffic turning it into a dumbphone with games. And unless I was bored and used it to game, it lasted practically forever. And my iPhone will usually last through the weekend from Friday morning to Sunday evening under normal use. If yours won't last a day, I think your "low to moderate use" is someone else's heavy use. Or it's a crappy phone.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[xaxa]

You can:
- Turn off WiFi. There's also a setting to turn off WiFi automatically after 15 minutes of inactivity.
- Turn off 3G
- Turn off synchronisation
- Turn down the screen brightness
I think my HTC Desire lasts approaching a week if I do all this, which last happened when I went to a music festival in another country (no WiFi, data roaming would cost hundreds, no intention of sitting near a power socket, no interest in email; but I did have very good signal).

I never remember to charge my phone at work, so I often turn off 3G and WiFi on my way out on Friday evening; then I'll be the only one at 4:30am on Saturday who can check the train timetable to get home.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[itsme1234]

Really, what is with this idea of leaving a small(ish) solar panel in the car to charge either the phone or a very small buffer battery?
The car already has a huge battery and you can use it to charge the phone countless times. Yes, it's finite but compared to what a small solar panel can get you from inside a car (being behind glass, in the shade a good part of the day and almost always not in the optimal position) it might as well be infinite.
A modern car will certainly use up more juice than a phone for its own standby (plus locking/unlocking/automatically turning on lights and stuff when you unlock/lock, etc).

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[jimmydigital]

WINDMILLS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY. GOOD NIGHT.

My faith in humanity is partially restored... I was waiting for someone to post that follow up.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[TheLink]

Maybe he reversed the polarity? :)

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[JasterBobaMereel]

Note you are comparing a battery powered device (that has to be low power) to mains devices that really don't care ...

Most devices (with no moving parts, and that are heating/cooling devices) could use very little power....

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[savuporo]

Solar film goes on the clothes/backpacks/hats. You can get a lot of hiking/camping gear with solar film on it these days. Useless in a city, perfect for that grand canyon crossing.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[TheRaven64]

It's usually more expensive to build something that uses a small amount of power to achieve some desired effect than something that uses a lot of power to do the same thing. This means that, given two devices identical in every respect other than power consumption, users will just see the difference in the price tag and go for the less efficient one.

Additionally, the difference in power consumption needs to be quite big to make a difference. I worked out a while ago that I paid about £1 for 1W of always-on power for a year. So, if a device is using 5W in standby instead of 1W then it's costing me £4/year more. If it costs £20 more, then the saving probably isn't worth it because it's going to be five years before I see the money back and that's more than the typical operation lifespan of cheap consumer electronics (even if they're still working after that time, they've probably been superseded). Because of this, most devices don't bother advertising their power consumption.

Big appliances, like fridges, freezers and washing machines, can make a bigger difference. An efficient fridge can easily cost £10-20 less per year than a cheap one, and so you can make back the difference within a year. Things like this, however, are (by law) required to show a rated efficiency so that buyers can compare them. The minimum efficiency also goes up every year. I found my electricity usage dropped a lot after I moved from a rented flat, with landlord-supplied old and cheap appliances, to my own place where I bought new (but also quite cheap) appliances.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[bemymonkey]

The appeal of solar power is that you can leave it anywhere you feel it's safe - not just in the car.

Also: Don't most cars cut power to the cigarette lighter unless at least the iginition is on? I'd be afraid of draining the battery in my POS that way, tbh....

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[hihihihi]

"It doesn't matter. It'll look great in a press release. The environmentalists will love it. Do it anyway."

though in their defence, they generally do try to be environmentalist "CES 2010 - Greenpeace Ranks Nokia As Top Green Gadget Company"(http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/ces-2010-greenpeace-ranks-nokia-as-top-green-gadget-company.html)

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[shellbeach]

I don't have a Galaxy S II, but if you're only checking emails then your phone should last much longer than a day ...

OTOH, if you're checking emails in between surfing the web and playing Asphalt 6 ... :)

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[hlavac]

My phone resides in my pocket.

Transparent pants! (Transaprent underwear optional.)

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[tibit]

I think you must have a bad battery. My wife's neanderthal Motorola worked for 1-2 days until I changed the battery, now it lasts a week+. Even when new, the battery lasted only 3 days.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[pev]

Nice idea, but seriously, don't take any tech of value to a festival it'll only get nicked... On the other hand build yourself a proper van [travelvans.co.uk] with solar charging facilities and go to festies in it instead!

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[tibit]

This is one of the most insightful things I've read today. Thank you!

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[TWX]

I do have a Galaxy S II, albeit the snapdragon-based "Hercules" version that T-Mobile sells, and I can get two, possibly three days of idle+occasional voice+occasional data services if I don't live on it. Since I have this thing called a job that requires my attention for around eight hours a day, my usage should be somewhat limited in those hours in which I'm away from my computer.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[jbengt]

I've tried turning those off, but they seem to automatically come back on, and don't turn off until I manually turn them off.
What a pain. My old feature phone used to last several days without a charge. My new smart phone, around 12 hours.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[jbengt]

Don't most cars cut power to the cigarette lighter unless at least the iginition is on?

Mine doesn't, so I quit leaving the charger plugged in.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[quacking duck]

My PVR uses 25W on standby, 29-30 when it spins up the hard drive (in standby or on). It's the worst electricity "vampire" device I have, and I had planned to get a powerbar with a timer to switch stuff off during the night and during weekdays when I'm at work. So figure about 0.65 kW/h a day, or about 5c (10c with "delivery charge").

Then our province-mandated smart meter program finally kicked in and I could see which hours of the day I was using the most electricity. It corresponded to my daily hot shower, i.e. my hot water tank. Each shower costs 50c ($1 w/DC).

I figured the PVR makes up about 6% of each hydro bill. Still worth considering a timer for, at $20 a pop it could pay off in about 2 years (figure it's off overnight, on during weeknights and weekend days).

But my phone charger? Even at 0.5W, that's 5c (10c), or less than 0.1% of each bill. It's simply not worth thinking it.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[jellomizer]

Because the people who think they are environmentalists think solar and wind power can meet all of our energy needs.
While it can offset some of our energy needs it cannot yet replace it.
We need smart environmentalism and energy policy. Everything we do has a trade off. We need to make decisions where we choose the right trade offs.
Fracking for Natural Gas could effect Ground water. But Drilling for oil or strip mining for Coal is much worse. Policy about where Fracking can happen and requiring insurances in case of a problem is a good thing, banning it because it could be bad is not.

Windmills and Solar farms in particular areas will be helpful as to aid in power distribution and cut down fuel however until it can meet demand it will need to be offset with other forms.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[inviolet]

I'm thinking the limitation will be the amount of power used when communicating with the local network. When transmitting, cell phones blast out a fair bit of RF power, on the order of 1 W, if memory serves. Audio, on the other hand, is easy to do with 10 mW or so when the speaker is near one's ear. Moreover, even in standby mode, phones still periodically connect to the local network which requires bursts of high power.

The handset's transmit power is regulated by the tower, based on how well the tower can hear the handset. Most handsets can do up to 0.6W of transmit power if so requested... but naturally they will use less power whenever possible.

Remember back when cellphones used a frequency that caused dit-dit-dit-daaaaaa-dit-dit interference on your car stereo? Ever noticed that sometimes the dits were really loud, other times very faint? That variance was the handset using different power levels, under orders from the tower.

So, the bottom line is, if you want to reduce handset power consumption, you need more towers (i.e. smaller cells) and/or more sensitive tower receivers. Yes, I realize that greater sensitivity will at some point require going below the noise floor... but that can be accompli$hed.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[inviolet]

such a charger couldn't be used to sell expensive phones under the pretext of Nokia being environmentally-friendly and all the associated fraudulent propaganda. ...and so the project is scrapped.

I actually don't see why they killed it. I would have paid an extra hundred bucks to have a phone with a longer battery life. My Galaxy S II barely gives me a day, if with a solar panel it would give me a day and a half, at least it would last without problems until I get home from work. Worth it in my books.

Have you looked at the inductive charging pads? There are several brands out there, and you can place pads on each of your desks plus one on your car dashboard. You could even contrive one inside the driver's seat of your car where it will press against your phone while it is in your pocket.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[necro81]

Although people like to boast that their home sound system has hundreds or thousands of watts of power, the amount of power that goes into the speaker of a cellphone is quite small: tens of milliwatts is all that's needed to make it near deafening when you hold it next to your ear. Headphones require even less power: 10 mW or so. Processing power in standby mode is likewise quite small.

By contrast, depending on the local signal strength, the amount of power going into the radio circuits is measured in hundreds of milliwatts to several watts. There's not a whole lot that can be done with that, because improving it requires improving not only the cellphone, but also the whole cellphone network (deploying more sensitive cell tower receivers, or having more of them). That's a gradual process, and we've experienced enormous improvements since cellphones were introduced. But it's hardly the exponential process we've come to expect in electronic gadgetry. I don't know what the broadcast power of the early brick cellphones was back in the 1980s, but I suspect it was only on the order of ten watts (the FCC puts limits on these things, after all), not hundreds. Over the past few decades I suspect we've seen a linear decrease in average cellphone radio broadcast power, one that I expect has already started to approach an asymptotic limit.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[digsbo]

Not so sure. Dumbphones, or feature phones, are big sellers in 2nd and 3rd world markets where access to power is a real concern. Not so much in the USA. Otherwise, people wouldn't buy these phones with dual-core processors and such. A daily charge is no big deal for anyone in the first world.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[grep_rocks]

I agree - their engineers were idiots if they had to build a prototype to figure out if this would work, however, in my experience the managers are often idiots who don't understand the whole idea of being able to simulate performance - my bet is they probably insisted on a prototype being built because they didn't trust the models, probably being non-technical themselves they have no ability to tell a good model from a bad one - such is corporate life these days

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[AmiMoJo]

$200?! I have been browsing the sales this week and you can get a solar/USB charged battery for your phone with a capacity of 9000mAh for about $50. A smaller one with only 1900mAh is about $15 on sale.

In fact you can get a USB phone "charger" that takes 4xAA batteries on eBay for $1. Put some meaty cells in there, I use Eneloop 2000mAh ones which can be charged by solar if you like, and your phone's battery is almost infinite. Even with some loss due to voltage conversion and heat a average high end smart phone battery is 1500mAh so having realistically 7600mAh of AA cells (before voltage drops too low to charge, Eneloop are especially good for that) means I can keep the GPS on and logging for days and not exhaust them.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[bemymonkey]

Yes, but check the power rating on that "USB Solar Cell Phone Charger With Humungous Battery" solar panel - they provide a tiny trickle charge that takes multiple days (!!!!) to charge up the built in battery. The panel I linked to puts out 800mA @ 5V (USB) - with optimal conditions, you can charge an average smartphone (~1200-1600mAh @ 3.7V) battery within a few hours.

With the cheap battery packs with built-in solar panels, you'll never manage to charge your phone unless it's a dumbphone, because most smartphones draw more power in standby than those dinky tiny little solar panels can provide.

The panel I linked to is the cheapest one I've found so far that might actually be usable.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[AmiMoJo]

Near zero no-load current chargers exist but are not common unfortunately. I have been thinking about making my own, but in the mean time I attached a USB cable to the PSU for the clock I made and use that to charge my phone. The clock is always on anyway.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[itsme1234]

Well, smartphones in this range get 4-5+ hours of video play, isn't it? I guess you could easily strech the (standard) battery to 2-3 weeks if you manage to limit yourself to 20 min of notepad/one sms (and the needed boot and shutdown). If not one (or more) extra batteries would've been lighter (and possibly cheaper) than most arrangements of the Power Monkey+solar panel type.

However with a little tweak this IS after the best scenario for solar power. Just leave the charger there! It'll recharge many, many phones, it'll power maybe directly a small radio.
Or somebody might just get up a bigger (like 50+W) solar panel (maybe foldable if it's too complicated, or only the cells and glue them to a roof or something). And then you can charge directly more than 10 phones at a time.
It's not that solar wouldn't work in the long run for small devices, it's just the break-even point in terms of size/weight/price is usually at weeks rather than hours.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Anonymous Coward]

You sir, are absolutely correct. Although, last time I checked the 3G connection was the one that consumed the 1W metric, with WiFi connections not being too far behind. Non-data connections may be slightly less power hungry, although, you still have to blast out a good amount of RF back to the cell tower. Running a little piezo speaker that you hold to you ear is is insignificant compared to the active RF transmitter.

It is well known that mobile phones drain their battery the quickest when "searching for a signal." That's because its running the transmitter in the highest power mode. If you leave your phone in an area with "1 bar", it will drain much, much quicker than having all bars on since you are farther away from a tower and have to overcome more path loss to maintain acceptable bit energy levels (not SNR since we're all digital, everywhere now).

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can also harvest vibration energy using a weighted piezoelectric slab. (This is how they do it in the MEMS world for low power systems.) You need to to tune it to some frequency range, but once it reaches resonance (or really just oscillation), every oscillation will produce voltage change, which you can harvest and store the current. "Paradiso" or "Roundy" has some interesting studies and papers on this.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Anonymous Coward]

My phone resides in my pocket. Even if I left it on the dash of my car, the casing is only so large, even on my Galaxy S II. I don't see how even the most efficient of solar panels in the most effective of locations would provide enough power. It's noble of them to try, but at the moment I'm not surprised this was the outcome.

I don't doubt that Nokia's engineers did some quick calculations and told their managers that solar charging wouldn't be practical before this project even got started. And then the managers said: "It doesn't matter. It'll look great in a press release. The environmentalists will love it. Do it anyway."

Actually, it's been done before by Ericsson/Sagem/Puma, so for a press release to be noticed, you'd need to do it so well you that wouldn't need to ship a plug-in charger in the box. And that's a ways off yet.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Hadlock]

I generally roll with 2G on and screen brightness set to low; wifi is off unless I need it (blessed with an unlimited data plan). Believe me, if I'm keeping tabs on how long I can go without recharging, I've already played all the "how to keep your phone going for more than a day" games :) Slim phones just have crappy^H^H^H tiny batteries. A quick google for "Nexus S short battery life" results in a lot of complaints.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Smauler]

dit-dit-dit-daaaaaa-dit-dit

That's actually dit-dit-dit-daaaa-daaaa-dit-dit-dit, and it's morse code.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[khallow]

Over the past few decades I suspect we've seen a linear decrease in average cellphone radio broadcast power, one that I expect has already started to approach an asymptotic limit.

It's worth noting here that there's probably a lot of orders of magnitude more power reduction we could do for a voice signal before we hit a physical limit. Voice doesn't carry a lot of data and flipping bits (that is, duplicating the information content of your voice on the other end) doesn't in itself take a lot of power. But we have a much higher physical limit on a handheld device for making sound.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[joocemann]

So we had a charged batt in my previously mentioned situation... it was consumed throughout the first day of searching for service. As you know, searching for service drains phones faster than anything. When service was found, and used, it was nearly dead.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[iamhassi]

the same way self winding watches work. Your arm is not a windmill either. In this case, a small magnet, in a tube, wrapped in a coil, such that when the user walks, the magnet slides from one end of the tube to the other, and back again. The real trick is to figure out how to arrange this little setup to maximize the number of times the process occurs, with minimal movement.

No.

Watches will run years on a CR-2025 battery pumping out 163mA @ 3V =~ 0.5 watt.

Smartphones barely last a day with a 1300mAh @ 3.7v = 4.8 watt battery

Using a self-winding mechanism similar to a watch in a smartphone would be completely worthless, it wouldn't power the phone for more than a few seconds

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[pz]

Morse code for S-M-S. I didn't know that!

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[tepples]

And the point of this article is that such a solar battery charger would have to be much bigger than the back of a phone.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Anonymous Coward]

The more interesting question is whether substituting normal power with solar where available renders sufficient cost savings over the life of the device to make the inclusion of a solar panel worthwhile. It's clear the world isn't going to switch completely to solar any time in the near future, but that doesn't mean some solar and some regular isn't still advantageous - anyone could have predicted the result in this case (given all that we expect of phones today) but the findings are probably still useful for answering related questions.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[thejaq]

There was a NDC study in the last year that approximated 160 million DVR devices in the US. I think they estimated that standby power consumption was something like 2/3 of total power consumed. As in if these devices were powered off we could shut down 6 600GW base load nuclear reactors (or equivalently sizes coal boilers). It's really an interesting problem, so much waste, yet so widely distributed. Who would have thought that Americans turning off TIVOs (when not in use...) would rival the environmental impact of the entire solar industry to date.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[thejaq]

Distributing the load over 2min is child's play. 1944J/120s = 16 W. Children and old people could easily do 25W on a stationary bike (A nominally fit adult could do 100-400W very easily for a minute), meaning that a phone/capacitor/whatever energy could be charged in a few minutes without breaking a sweat. 16W from a hand crank might be unreasonable for a child ( I doubt it!), but seems fine for an adult.
Seems extremely reasonable to me!

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Anonymous Coward]

At $2, could you just daisy chain a few of these together? Assuming there's a cheap way to keep the voltage correct, that could get the desired charge much quicker than 10 hours. It's not very practical, but I still think its pretty cool.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[thejaq]

A larger problem for environmentalism (and most movements and groups of people) is having to combat false representations like this,

Because the people who think they are environmentalists think solar and wind power can meet all of our energy needs."

Wind and solar energy can not yet replace coal. However, we can expand these industries by 10-20x before hitting this supposed grid wall. So in practice, strongly advocating for support/growth of wind/solar isn't really a problem, yet. We can literally build out thousands of gigawatts. I agree that an intermediate solution requires natural gas. Natural gas peaking must be displaced by an over capacity of renewables. The over capacity of peaking natural gas facilities should displace base load coal plants. Wala, 50-70% less emissions from generation. (I could be more controversial and claim this will net cheaper generation too.) Even small natural gas plants are more efficient than our coal grid and they can be ramped quickly, which is a perfect companion to wind/solar. Then we get 50 yr to eliminate the gas with whatever thorium fantasy inhabits the /. mind. Of course, the potential electric car/battery boom (50-100kWh x 10,000,000+ vehicles = storage revolution)

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[LunaticTippy]

You should buy an inductive charger They're pretty cheap, mine was about $30.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[bill_mcgonigle]

OK, $2 lifespan total. :)

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[itsme1234]

No such thing available for my device (of course the part that goes INSIDE the phone is the interesting one); one guy did some VERY VERY VERY nasty hardware mod: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1319473
Nasty in the sense that I wouldn't do it to my phone, the mod itself is really cool.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[mcrbids]

Apparently, you have a pretty crappy phone, then. I have a Moto Droid2 which easily lasts through the day with normal smartphone use. If I use it as a straight up mini-tablet, it lasts a few hours.

If I use it as a phone, occasional email, with wifi and GPS off, it pretty much lasts about 2.5 days. If I'm using driving directions with realtime GPS, it lasts an hour or less. (but who uses Navigation with turn-by-turn without a car charger handy?)

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[LunaticTippy]

Wow, that guy is very...persistent. I'm surprised nobody made an inductive charger for it, seems like an obvious need.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[MichaelSmith]

Yes, agreed. My son has a very practical solar reading light. The battery pack and solar cell are in a removable module which I occasionally put on top of a post in the back yard to charge. Works okay with that architecture.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[quacking duck]

I don't get *why* they're using so much power on standby. For my PVR, a Cisco Explorer 8642HD, the difference between cold standby (hard drive spun down) and warm standby (every 5-10 minutes the hard drive is spun up for a minute or so; but what for?) is about 5W.

The difference between warm standby and it actually being on and sending a signal to the TV and receiver: 0W.

In other words, the difference in 5W is only used to power the hard drive. Every other circuit is fully active 24/7, even though in standby it's not processing any data, sending no signals, etc.

I get that it sometimes needs to process instructions from the cable company, like program listing or firmware updates, but otherwise why can't the rest of the system be powered down during standby like the rest of my equipment? IIRC everything else on standby (TV, PS3, Airport Express, AV receiver and speakers) consume less than 1W *combined*.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tie a rope to a person, then use a small hand crank to winch them up to the 14th floor of a building.

Not a problem, with the right gear ratio between the hand crank and the winch.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Anonymous Coward]

This has got to be one of the simplest textbook examples of an economic externality.

The people designing or distributing the devices don't directly bear the cost of their horrible waste. There is no incentive for them to make it better. Even if it only cost them a few bucks in development effort to make it better, there isn't a few bucks in incentive to do it, and so "they" don't.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Goaway]

Time is still a problem.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Jarik C-Bol]

i'm not saying power it exclusively that way. I'm saying trickle charge a battery that way. Yes its inefficient, but it makes a phone capable of recharging *anywhere* given enough time.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[Anonymous Coward]

This goes against the prevailing wisdom, but I went from 12-16 hours between charges on my Evo Shift to 3-4 days (and I can stretch it longer if I'm careful) by rooting and removing all the carrier-specific shovelware/spyware that kept autostarting all the time. CyanogenMod doesn't have any of that stuff.

Re:Why did they think this would work?

[minderbinder.milo]

You know...I wonder if anybody has ever calculated how much it costs the electric company to carry out every calculation the do on every single bill to 10 decimal points. Think about it.. Every decimal point requires significantly more processing power, storage capacity, bandwidth, paper, printer ink, and increases the liklihood of errors. Go ahead and set the float to the max on a TI nSpire CX and run some calcs. You'll see what I mean. Granted, the processor and memory in a TI is a far cry from x86 based servers...but think of the scale and the number of accounts and entries.

So basically

[Deathnerd]

They spent god knows how much money and time to send this team of researchers around the world to exotic locations to talk on a cellphone with a solar panel duck taped to the back of it? Where the hell was THAT career option on career day?

Re:So basically

[Anonymous Coward]

besides which you can get a much larger external charger, that will in fact charge the phone, if at standby.

Re:So basically

[mrmeval]

I think they released this information to show that other offerings were bogus.

I've been interested in a solar cell that could run my phone in even very cloudy weather. I also wanted it to charge/run a radio, a flashlight and recharge some batteries though not all at once. It would cost between $200-$300US for one that can run and charge my phone or do any of the other individual tasks and be rugged enough for my needs.

Re:So basically

[game kid]

They considered roping the solar panel duck to the phone, but tape was cheaper and more effective so they went with that.

Re:So basically

[steveha]

I guess you are being funny, but if you read TFA you will find that they shipped prototype phones to volunteers. For example, their volunteer in Kenya works as a security guard and was well able to get sunlight for his phone (lots of sun plus he sits in one place a lot so he could just leave the phone in the sun a lot).

Basically this project just cost Nokia the cost of knocking out a few prototypes and shipping them. I'll bet their engineers had an idea about how well it would work, but now that they have tried it, they have data on exactly how well it does or doesn't work.

steveha

Re:So basically

[PCM2]

I believe in this case you mean Finnish taxpayers, but same rules apply.

Re:So basically

[smi.james.th]

with a solar panel duct taped to the back of it?

FTFY

Re:So basically

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention that a solar panel duck would be a pretty unwieldy thing to have taped to the back of your phone as you're walking around.

Re:So basically

[Ramin_HAL9001]

Don't worry. The money came from a government green energy research grant, paid for by the taxpayers.

So a politician says, "Numerous independent studies found that solar power is ineffective at charging even small devices that we use every day, like cell phones and tablet comptuers. What makes you liberals think we can run the power grid of our entire nation on solar power?!" (queue raucous applause from big oil companies and devout right-wingers).

If I were cynical, I would say that this were a plot by the oil companies to produce enough research papers to support their anti-environmentalist agenda, which includes convincing everyone of the idea that solar is ineffective.

Re:So basically

[EmagGeek]

I would put it differently. I would say:

"Anyone with a basic understanding of mathematics and the current state of the art in photovoltaics can figure out on the back of a napkin that 5 square inches of silicon can't generate enough electricity to run a phone, without having to spend a million taxpayer dollars to travel to the worlds most exotic lands to try it."

The proposal fails by inspection.

Re:So basically

[Anonymous Coward]

They spent god knows how much money

People complain that corporations are hoarding money but when they actually use some of it (hotel, food, travel, materials, engineers, etc...) people complain that they are wasting money. Even if the idea should have been a non-starter, you can't have it both ways...

Re:So basically

[Anonymous Coward]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duct_tape#Etymology

Re:So basically

[Anonymous Coward]

Therein is the problem. The engineers wrapped the duct tape over the solar cell, rendering it nearly useless.

Sure it can

[mcavic]

But the solar panel will be much bigger than the phone. Solar power has always been quite weak, especially for something as power hungry as a cell phone. The fact that solar is going so far today is only the result of large, well-designed panels.

Re:Sure it can

[Anonymous Coward]

The government subsidies don't hurt either.

Re:Sure it can

[Anonymous Coward]

I use 1 of the Freeloader Pros when I'm out camping. It works great, it will charge my Samsung Epic in about 6 hours. There's a built-in battery that you can pull from when your phone is finished charging.

Re:Sure it can

[hedwards]

I realize that you're a troll, but look at the images, that last one in particularly is like 10 times as large as the phone it's charging.

Re:Sure it can

[mattack2]

Solar power has always been quite weak

Except that solar calculators work(ed) quite well, even on indoors light. Yes, I realize they presumably used an incredibly low amount of power compared to a phone, and I agree with most of the other comments (e.g. a phone is usually in one's pocket).

Still, it seems to me that keeping a phone on standby is far better than nothing.. It at least would increase the time between recharges.

Re:Sure it can

[DeathElk]

I use the JuiceBar when charger when camping/biking. It's a great little unit that uses solar power to charge an internal battery, which will then charge your devices whilst you sleep. The challenge is keeping it exposed to the sun but secure whilst you're out on the trails.

Re:Sure it can

[Anonymous Coward]

That was a very helpful post.
Are you feeling OK?

Mods, grow up.

Re:Sure it can

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it's a good thing that we have enthusiastic volunteers such as yourself to liven things up.
Keep up the good work.

...Sigh...

[Anonymous Coward]

This research shows one thing, for now the phone and the charger still need to be separate.

I can see a separate charger that folds or rolls out, creating a large enough surface to harvest enough energy from the sun for a full charge or ideally: for a couple of full charges; you then connect the phone to this charger (which has stored the energy internally) at your convenience.

Re:...Sigh...

[crazycheetah]

You can buy some things that are similar to what you're talking about already. I've actually got a kinda small one that won't do much while using my phone with like everything on, but if the phone's sitting idly, it'll charge it pretty well. This one's not quite as much as you're talking about--it does have a battery that it puts the charge into, but it's actually pretty small and really only meant to keep the charge off of the panel more consistent (makes a light more solidly on as opposed to flickering on a very similar panel without the battery; this is just my very limited understanding of it, so I could be off on why they have a minimal battery on the thing, but that's the way the sales guy was describing it to me when I bought it). However, if they even started selling these with phones, that would be pretty cool in itself (though I think it's more of a niche market--most people I know don't really charge the phone in sunlight very often...)

Re:...Sigh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. Phones need wattage to do the transmission thing. Not to mention it's got more of a computer in it than a pocket calculator and typically a backlit screen. What works for a pocket calculator isn't going to do too well here. A solar panel which fits on a pocket phone simply doesn't have enough juice.

The aftermarket micro-USB power supply makers should provide though. I have some suggestions:

1. A solar panel with some hard clear plastic outside that also doubles as a clip board might get some use in a travel situation. The secondary purpose as a clip board able to retain an A4 sized piece of paper means that the solar panel should be sufficiently large enough to actually charge in a reasonable amount of time. (Too many travel solar panels are still too damn small and flimsy to be worth the bother.) It also means that the solar panel you're lugging around still has some use when it's dark out. Take notes, draw, or write a letter. Sure such a design (as I picture it) means you can't use it as a clip-board and charge at the same time, but keeping paper on it and the desire for a smooth writing surface while not charging means that the panel will be kept fairly clean and free of scratches.

2. A hand crank charger. They work well enough with flashlights and travel radios. Heck just make a flashlight radio that has an alternate 5v micro-USB out. Plug the phone in, and crank away. I'm guessing about every minute in cranking should give about 3 minutes worth of charge in airtime. Not much, but better than nothing when plugging in a wall charger simply isn't available.

3. A bike genny that supports device charging. Normally these devices are used for powering lights. Adding a voltage controlled 5V micro-usb wire which routes from a small generator to a pannier pack isn't too terrible an idea. In some undeveloped places, this would be the equivalent of having a car plug. Also seems like it would go over well in developed countries, not just school kids or places like Amsterdam or Japan where they take bikes seriously. Somebody that does a lot of touring and bicycle camping may like to have one as well. There is already a market for this, a manufacturer simply has to make it happen.

Re: External Cells

[Anonymous Coward]

What did they do, try using it like a calculator? Why not have a larger group of solar-cells that would mount on a car-top? Or just unroll to place on the ground, even? Not knowing the particulars it is tough to call here. But it seems possible. SOmetimes you just have to GET outside the box you're in.

Philips sells a solar USB battery/charger

[PolygamousRanchKid]

A combo solar USB battery/charger: http://shop.philips.co.uk/store?Action=DisplayProductDetailsPage&Locale=en_GB&SiteID=rpeeub2c&productID=202504800

So, you can charge the battery via USB or via the solar panel. Now, how long it takes to charge the battery . . . it might help if you live some place where there is a lot of sunlight . . . like on Mercury.

I used something similar a while back on vacation in Portugal in summer . . . the solar charge of a whole day wasn't able to top off my cell phone at night.

Hey, but if you like to pretend that you're green, leave it out on your towel at the beach . . .

But does it extend battery?

[hipp5]

I mean, if I can have this in combo with a battery that would be moderately cool. If it maintained standby power and I only drained from the battery when actively using the phone I'm sure it would reduce the frequency I'd have to recharge. Surely that's worth something.

Re:But does it extend battery?

[Anonymous Coward]

That part is already working.
Nokia tried to create a cell phone that would never have to be charged.

Re:But does it extend battery?

[sfm]

Unfortunately, letting the phone sit on the dash of your car while
charging causes it to heat up, significantly reducuing the life
of your lithium battery. A better choice is to use an external
solar panel to ship power ot your phone (which is tucked safely
away, out of direct sunlight). So have we come full circle on this ?

Re:But does it extend battery?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, letting the phone sit on the dash of your car while
charging causes it to heat up, significantly reducuing the life
of your lithium battery. A better choice is to use an external
solar panel to ship power ot your phone (which is tucked safely
away, out of direct sunlight). So have we come full circle on this ?

Not only that, but I'm pretty sure that in Kenya (where it was most successful)... try leaving your phone out in the sun or anywhere visible, for that matter. The sun might be the least of your worries.

Re:But does it extend battery?

[Rageaholic]

Or more likely leaving your phone charging on the dashboard of your car leads to someone smashing the window and stealing it. I tend to try and keep my phone out of sight to deter casual theft, I don't really see how a solar powered phone would be compatible with this.

Re:But does it extend battery?

[NetFusion]

Temperatures over 140F (easily achievable on dashboard) will damage permanently LIPO batteries, cells will start to puff and internal resistance will rise. Fire is real possibility if done repeatedly when fully charged. Even room temperature will degrade a LIPO over time depending on its charge state.

A fully charge cell (4.2v) will lose 35% of its capacity at 100F after one year.
A half charge cell (3.8v) will lose 15% of its capacity at 100F after one year.
A fully charge cell (4.2v) will lose 20% of its capacity at 75F after one year.
A half charge cell (3.8v) will lose 4% of its capacity at 75F after one year.
A fully charge cell (4.2v) will lose 6% of its capacity at 35F after one year.
A half charge cell (3.8v) will lose 2% of its capacity at 35F after one year.

What you should take away from this:
Store LIPO powered devices in a cool shaded places. Never buy extra LIPOs unless you have near term plans to use them. For long term storage of LIPOs or devices with them, get them to half charged and store in the fridge if possible (do not freeze). Beware of condensation when bringing LIPO's or devices back up to room temp in humid environments.

Re:But does it extend battery?

[NetFusion]

A few more things to add: Avoid buying old LIPO stock/powered devices stored in unknown conditions.
Guys who always keeping cell phones in their pockets (98F) will degrade their batteries faster then women who keep them in their purse (75F).

Success via Different Approach

[lobiusmoop]

Rather than making solar-powered phones, Nokia have pretty much solved the problem already by making simple high-efficiency phones like the 1280, which can run for 2 weeks between charges.

Re:Success via Different Approach

[JoeMerchant]

My phones for the last 5 years (Motorola and LG) have both run 2 weeks on a charge.

Re:Success via Different Approach

[BillX]

The battery lifetime for any cellphone depends heavily on the network provider's coverage as well. Unfortunately no amount of efficiency hacks can correct for this. Things like radio scheme (CDMA/GSM), 2G/3G/etc., and especially the distance to the tower matter. Virtually all are smart enough to dynamically adjust their transmit strength to not-much-more than necessary, but if the coverage is poor (active tower is far away), the phone must spend a LOT of energy keeping in contact with it. For any phone spending most of its time in standby (smart and dumb alike), the cellular radio will dominate power consumption. (With the cell radio out of the picture, my middle-road Android phone will go 2 weeks of light usage when in airplane mode.)

I have a feeling most of the 1-2 week battery life claims (for any phone) come from city dwellers - they'll be in for a shock when they visit the boonies!

Nokia's Been Researching Solar Power?

[guttentag]

This explains why they kept getting closer and closer to windows. Maybe now that they've realized this isn't the way to go they can get back on track.

rimshot

Maybe if they took the phone outside they'd get better results. All the imperfections in the windows are probably cutting into the amount of actual power the device gets.

rimshot

Thank you, I'll be here all week. Try the veal.

Re:Nokia's Been Researching Solar Power?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are trying waaaaay too hard, sir.

Re:Nokia's Been Researching Solar Power?

[game kid]

I thought they should use the Track OS too but they didn't listen.

Re:Nokia's Been Researching Solar Power?

[jjoelc]

Maybe if they were allowed to OPEN the WINDOWS...

Thanks folks, I'll be here all week... Don't forget to tip your waitress!

My cocktail napkin agrees

[__aaltlg1547]

You can't get more than 100mA of charging current out of a collector on the back of a cell phone.

With a typical battery capacity of 2700 mAh, that means it would take 27 hours of vertically incident sunlight to charge your battery.

Good luck with that.

Re:My cocktail napkin agrees

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess they tried the arctic circle at the wrong time of year.

Re:My cocktail napkin agrees

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't get more than 100mA of charging current out of a collector on the back of a cell phone.

With a typical battery capacity of 2700 mAh, that means it would take 27 hours of vertically incident sunlight to charge your battery.

Good luck with that.

Maybe your phone has a 2700mAh battery that needs recharging daily. Mine has a 700mAh battery that lasts about a week. Does that sound more viable?

Nokia's Mythbusters episode

[gmuslera]

Only lacked an exploding battery, and, well, trying another approachs, like wearable solar charging clothes (could be the next fashion, or at least for cellphones for soldiers, police or other professions with uniforms), or taking energy from other sources (heat from body or environment, sweat, walking/running, or even heartbeats)

Look closer to home

[not_surt]

Like many in the developed world I carry a considerable surplus fuel stockpile on my abdomen which it would be nice (and perhaps healthy) to take advantage of.
Maybe a combination if an in-body blood sugar energy harvesting rig and inductive charging coils on each hip? If your fuel stockpile is running low then make it a solar charging rig with a symbiotic algae/cyanobacteria in the skin to produce sugars from sunlight.

Re:Look closer to home

[stephanruby]

Or you could always use pee to generate your own power. You could stick some electrodes into your bladder, or if you're the squimish type, you could just do it the traditional way and refill your phone with fresh pee every 6 hours.

Re:Look closer to home

[Anonymous Coward]

You already have a major consumer of blood sugar in your body: a brain.
It even orders independently to get some blood sugar swiftly.

Better make that a fat metabolizing hip implant.
That way you'll fill up your electrical gadget AND loose some weight.

No wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

I nearly always keep my cell phone where the sun does not shine.

Re:No wonder

[reboot246]

Right next to your head?

well

[Anonymous Coward]

Did they try hurling the phone directly into the sun? I bet the battery would charge so fast it would explode!

Alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

The way I see it is the same as how a solar batter charger won't run the electronics in you vehicle. That solar charge, despite being inadequate to RUN things still works to charge the battery when there is no load, though it may not be fast nor will it be horribly convenient.

Even if the phone cannot charge itself enough to stay alive, it could essentially bring up the battery enough while off to have sufficient power to turn back on and make a phone call or two. Ever been horribly lost? Had your phone die, and you're quite confident you could get reception otherwise? Perhaps its even a phone with a GPS!
That solar feature would be GREAT even if you could only get the power to run the phone for ten minutes.

It seems like a bit of a waste, and I'm sure it is, but it can still prove useful should a situation arise.

On the other hand, if I could get a hold of a phone with a crank on the side to charge it up, you can bet I'd use it. ;) I'm not a picky person and I could care less about the visual appeal of my phone. As long as it's functional, I'm happy.

( The new Iphone has a fair bit of real estate on the back that could be used for a solar panel, but it's also a power hungry monster. )

On to the next idea

[Megahard]

A nuclear powered phone.

Re:On to the next idea

[Anonymous Coward]

solar powered flashlight

Re:On to the next idea

[Anonymous Coward]

well there's a bright idea

Re:On to the next idea

[stephanruby]

Solar energy is nuclear energy...

Re:On to the next idea

[Phaedrus420]

And people say hydrogen will never provide useful power.

Re:On to the next idea

[DanielRavenNest]

Gravitational confinement fusion - the only kind known to work so far. It's somewhat lacking in shielding though. Even from 149.6 million km away, it will still kill you several ways if you don't have the equivalent of 10 meters of water or 4 meters of rock to protect you.

Re:On to the next idea

[martin-boundary]

Oh.

I was hoping they would develop a solar powered torchlight!

Re:On to the next idea

[rdebath]

What's so funny? I've got one of these and it works very well thankyou.

The marketing specs are: "Charge the battery panel under sunlight for 8 hours and it will last up to 5 hours". It normally takes longer than that to reach full charge but even a half charge is longer than an old torch.

Re:On to the next idea

[rdnetto]

You may laugh, but this will happen eventually. And it's going to take planned obsolescence to whole new levels.

Re:On to the next idea

[gknoy]

And, you can bring it camping or have it in an emergency pack. It might not be immediately useful, but it's great (I expect) if you can plan its usage a day ahead of time.

Re:On to the next idea

[Anonymous Coward]

shit

Re:On to the next idea

[coolmadsi]

Oh.

I was hoping they would develop a solar powered torchlight!

I've had one of those for years. Solar panel on the torch charges the battery, battery used to light torch when you need to use it. Handy as a general emergency torch around the house so I don't have to worry about finding the batteries are dead if there is a power cut.

Re:On to the next idea

[coolmadsi]

And, you can bring it camping or have it in an emergency pack. It might not be immediately useful, but it's great (I expect) if you can plan its usage a day ahead of time.

I use one as an emergency torch (in case there is a power cut for example), just left underneath the window so it gets a lot of sun

Re:On to the next idea

[Anonymous Coward]

They would need that for iPhone 7

Samsung E1107

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I wonder what I've been doing then with my Samsung E1107 from time to time.
It's certainly not as fast but it works and if you ever get lost you won't be one of those poor sods in movies.

Wait what?

[bmo]

They physically tested the phone at the equator and in Sweden and that was the only way they could figure out that the solar flux would be higher at the equator?

Like, someone couldn't sit down at a desk with a calculator and trig it out and find out how much exactly the phone would get at 50 degrees N latitude as opposed to 0?

Someone fucking hire me. I will figure this shit out for you. I won't even need to be flown out anywhere (though southern Italy would be nice). I'll just crunch out the numbers and they will be accurate and a lot faster than what Nokia got their results.

--
BMO

Re:Wait what?

[JoeMerchant]

They physically tested the phone at the equator and in Sweden and that was the only way they could figure out that the solar flux would be higher at the equator?

Like, someone couldn't sit down at a desk with a calculator and trig it out and find out how much exactly the phone would get at 50 degrees N latitude as opposed to 0?

Someone fucking hire me. I will figure this shit out for you. I won't even need to be flown out anywhere (though southern Italy would be nice). I'll just crunch out the numbers and they will be accurate and a lot faster than what Nokia got their results.

--
BMO

Somebody sat at a desk with a calculator and trig'ed it out long before people went on the road to do the testing. Being Nokia, they may have had people in the field who did not have to travel, or, they just sent the engineers on a perk trip to do ground truth.

It isn't really tested until you've done the ground truth.

Re:Wait what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you could possibly be cheaper than fed-exing two phones to two different parts of the world with the instructions - turn on and leave in sun...

Sounds like the old 'What is the volume of this Ligh Bulb question"....

Re:Wait what?

[Anonymous Coward]

This could easily have been done on a fifty Euro budget, top to bottom, plus the employee time to do the reports and such.

Nokia is based in Finland, so Sweden is essentially local--it was something like 30 euro to go from Helsinki to Stockholm on the party boat, so a lot of Finns would go there on the weekends for kicks. (Or Estonia to get cheap beer.) They may have just had their local office there. Employees typically had a cool developmental phone on hand, so this might have been one of them.

A lot of their software development is done by African immigrats; I knew a few of them. So they could have simply mailed a phone to an employee in Kenya or had him take it home on a trip after they demonstrated it wouldn't work near the Arctic circle.

Re:Wait what?

[PCM2]

It's possible that they calculated that such a device might possibly be useful to people living in adverse conditions, who might be willing to sacrifice normal use cases (e.g. leaving it on the dashboard of the car when not in use, instead of carrying it in a pocket) if it meant they'd have access to a phone. So they sent it to some people who might be willing to try it, to see if it would actually work out that way. It didn't.

Re:Wait what?

[thejaq]

The problem is not calculating solar flux. IMO, I think I could get parts and assemble prototypes while enroute to kenya (excluding TSA interference) and test the phones for a few days in less time than I could develop a convincing model (and I already have all the PV/solar code). IMO, the trip was probably more about how their phones intercept the solar resource under real world usage. A model would necessarily make assumptions that field work could substantiate or falsify.

Re:Wait what?

[minderbinder.milo]

No...you got it backwards. The fact that you could design a working prototype without expensive and unnecessary testing only works against you in the job market. To TRULEY excel in the corporate environment you have to fuck something like this up routinely. By virtue of repeated fuckups, you will inherently make your supervisor look "smart". At the very least you won't inadvertently reveal how incredibly fucking incompetent they are for proposing to test a product already doomed to fail at both poles as well as the equator. Sweet jesus... Homo sapient really is going to extinct, aren't we?

Re: External Cells

[chrb]

Such devices already exist, eg. the SolarMonkey.Supposedly it works okay.

why on the phone?

[hort_wort]

I'd think they'd be better off making a snazzy clothing accessory and marketing it with the phone instead. Solar vest, maybe? Vests are just waiting for an excuse for a comeback. There are already backpacks with solar panels, but those aren't really practical for non-students.

Solar Powered Charger?

[Anonymous Coward]

Would it be such a jump to simply create a solar powered phone battery charger with a battery that you swapped out on a daily basis much like how we have to recharge our phones every night at the moment?

Re:Solar Powered Charger?

[PPH]

I've got one. Its a solar panel with charge control and an internal battery. It can be placed in direct sunlight and charged in about a day. Once charged, it will charge anything with a USB power plug from its internal battery.

I'd guess that most phones spend most of their time deep in someone's pocket. This charger can be left where the sunlight is best. Also, its somewhat larger than a cell phone. Building the PV cells into a phone is a compromise between small collector area and an oversized phone.

Re:Solar Powered Charger?

[jginspace]

Once charged, it will charge anything with a USB power plug from its internal battery.

Anything? Remember it's Nokia we're talking about here. They were very slow in getting into the USB-charging game and even now their USB chargers require some kind of circuitry to negotiate the connection (like on the USB port of a laptop) - you can't just plug them into a dumb USB port.

Re:Solar Powered Charger?

[itsme1234]

If it is USB power plug sure it'll charge it. There is only one caveat with many modern phones: you need a small resistor (basically a short) between the data pins if you need to draw more power from a dumb charger that can't negotiate otherwise what can offer you. This is it, just short out the data pins (if they are cabled at all) on your charger (assuming it can deliver 600-700-800 or maybe even more mA. This is, again, part of USB standard.

Before this, yes, Nokia had some peculiarities (although fine in the end providing you learn them...):
a. phones (even reasonably smart for the time, with GPS, wifi, mail, browser, youtube capable, microsdhc, etc) with standard microUSB that would not charge over it (that was pretty strange and dumb).
b. the standard "round" connector would accept a very wide range of voltages BUT you need to limit the current to something under 1A. This means you just can't connect some "normal" reasonably powerful power supply of the appropiate voltage and have it working. It would actually detect it and say "not charging". It also means that "straight" charging from many USBs would work, until you try to use one that gives you higher current (either by chance or advertised feature for some laptops or motherboards) and then it would not work. This is documented (look for "Nokia 2-mm DC Charging Interface Specification") and the easy solution is to put a small resistor in series with your power supply but still a PITA (and yes, I did have to reverse engineer it myself and found the documentation just years after...).

Re:Solar Powered Charger?

[PPH]

Anything?

It'll charge an iPod. In my experience, Apple products are some of the pickiest gizmos to satisfy when it comes to mating them with non Apple brand hardware.

It also has a couple of adapters which allow it to charge some non-USB (5V) stuff, like an ancient palm Pilot.

Sound waves don't carry enough power

[Anonymous Coward]

A 100dB sound pressure at 10cm (lets assume you can achieve that by screaming very, very loudly into the phone, say when you're talking to your boss ;-) will have a sound power of maybe around 90dB (sound power & sound pressure are two different things).

As sound power is referenced to a level of 1 picowatt, 90dB represents an actual acoustic power of 0.001 watts. This is how much power you're putting into that scream. The phone only sees a small part of it, the rest 'leaks' into the surrounds (letting the neighbours three doors down overhear your latest 'performance review').

I can't see that charging a phone any time soon. Even microphones, which are specifically designed to be as efficient as possible in converting sound waves into electrical signals, usually require pre-amplification before you can do anything useful with the signal.

As an aside, the very low power levels associated with actual sound waves is why most stereos / home theatre setups are grossly overpowered. I have a 65w per channel amplifier, and with some custom-built high-sensitivity speakers, I've never turned it up much above -20dB, and that's painfully loud. That's less than 5w per channel...
(Note: really low-frequency *does* require a lot of power, as it needs to move a lot of air to get the same sound pressure level, which is why subwoofer amplifiers are often rated at 5-10 times the main amp - my sub has a 450w amp in it, for example)

Re:Sound waves don't carry enough power

[frdmfghtr]

Even microphones, which are specifically designed to be as efficient as possible in converting sound waves into electrical signals, usually require pre-amplification before you can do anything useful with the signal.

Usually, but not always. The Navy uses sound-powered (wired) phones on all the ships and subs, and they work quite well. Maybe slightly offtopic, but I thought I'd point it out.

Re:Sound waves don't carry enough power

[itsme1234]

Are you sure they are "sound powered"? The old carbon microphones don't need AMPLIFICATION but they still need POWER because they work by changing their resistance.
Standard dynamic microphones do create electricity but I doubt it'll get very far before being drown into noise, especially if you wanted to be eventually usable on a ship.

Re:Sound waves don't carry enough power

[Reservoir Penguin]

Thats ok, I'm the Dragonborn!

Re:Sound waves don't carry enough power

[Wierdy1024]

You are right. They will have a standard power supply connected in series with a carbon microphone on one phone and a speaker on the other phone. Neither phone receives power, because the centralised switching station provides it. It probably has a tiny battery backup so it still works when the rest of the power on the ship has failed.

Re:Sound waves don't carry enough power

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure they are "sound powered"? The old carbon microphones don't need AMPLIFICATION but they still need POWER because they work by changing their resistance.
Standard dynamic microphones do create electricity but I doubt it'll get very far before being drown into noise, especially if you wanted to be eventually usable on a ship.

Yes, they use dynamic microphones rather than carbon. There's often a hand-cranked magneto to power a ringer at the other end. In use on pretty much all commercial ships and sometimes more handy than a "real" wired or DECT phone.

"Nokia: The Sun Can't Charge Your Phone"

[Anonymous Coward]

Obligatory: http://fortnightlitpress.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/knapp01.png?w=480

--Reaper924

The real reason ...

[jginspace]

This research was killed by several three-letter agencies who shiver at the prospect of people not actually carrying their phones ON THEIR PERSON. Those hellfire missiles aren't cheap and they want them to hit those nasty mujahadis when they're least expecting it - having the missile crash through the roof - not blowing the poor bugger's Nokia up while it's sitting on the porch and he's sitting in the outhouse.

nokia sux

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a cheap pocket solar charger, and from a days charge it was able to bring my phone up to half a charge. Nokia doesn't know what the hell they are doing, as clearly you can get a significant charge from a small solar panel, mine is about 1.5"x3".

Re:nokia sux

[kanto]

I have a cheap pocket solar charger, and from a days charge it was able to bring my phone up to half a charge. Nokia doesn't know what the hell they are doing, as clearly you can get a significant charge from a small solar panel, mine is about 1.5"x3".

How hard do you have to try to not RTFA:

Charging mobile phones using sun rays isn't a new concept. For example, Nokia launched what the company contends was the first solar-powered phone back in 1997.

The thing is, modern phones do more than run a couple of lines of ascii chars and make calls. It's also about convenience; using a recharger (be it via usb, a portable pack, whatever) every week or so is convenient, having your phone out all the time to recharge it isn't.

Re:nokia sux

[Anonymous Coward]

Where there is sun wearing a hat is recommended. The brims of my hats are typically 420 sq cm, the area of a trickle charger for a car battery, and that is not all the area available in a hat. So why not a solar hat that is also a mobile phone, lower a monocle for display, touch pad over the heart. There are heaps of options. GPS of course, wind direction and strength for boaties. A power user could even go for a solar sombrero. Now that has a ring to it. Pork-pie PV?
Solar tracking circuitry to determine which cells are supplying power moment by moment. The technologies are all available. Just add some imagination.

noel

Re:nokia sux

[kanto]

Where there is sun wearing a hat is recommended. The brims of my hats are typically 420 sq cm, the area of a trickle charger for a car battery, and that is not all the area available in a hat. So why not a solar hat that is also a mobile phone, lower a monocle for display, touch pad over the heart. There are heaps of options. GPS of course, wind direction and strength for boaties. A power user could even go for a solar sombrero. Now that has a ring to it. Pork-pie PV? Solar tracking circuitry to determine which cells are supplying power moment by moment. The technologies are all available. Just add some imagination.

noel

My imagination will not make people buy phones with an obligatory sombrero attached, nor do you accurately represent Nokia's findings that you can't recharge a phone with a solar panel fixed to it.

Why not use windup power?

[digitaldude99]

I have seen windup torches you can buy in the shops that allow you to charge your phone off them. This seems like a much better option than solar power. This would also work at night which of course solar panels dont. Maybe one day they will invent lunar panels ;)

Re:Why not use windup power?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have one of those. It has a small solar panel on it as well, but the battery life isn't good on the torch/flashlight. But for third world countries, backcountry hikers, and poor people that don't have electric service, it would be good.

But maybe they should make a separate unit that could power any different device that could plug in.

been walking with sun-powered walkman 5000 days

[Inyu]

...ago, and I had to do is to wear a hand-made jacket with only 15, 5x5cm solar batteries on my back.

Thinking cap on...

[fyngyrz]

Hmmm..... deep vee cleavage tops for chicks.... glittery solar cell appliques for their breastesess... motorized bras that cause nipples to auto-track the sun when the sun is in front of said chick... woven golden wires leading to cellphone pocket like a necklace...

PROFIT!

Wait, did I say that out loud?

Solar isn't the solution

[Anonymous Coward]

I think rectothermal energy is the solution here.

Perhaps in the future . . .

[paleo2002]

we'll have the ability to collect solar energy on a large scale and transfer it to some sort of storage device that attaches to the phone . . .

Meh

[DnaK]

If i need a secondary source for power i can always use my wind up charger. Only limited by cramps of the hand!

Did you mean...

[Haxagon]

...Contradict? Damn, I must have missed the solar panels that automatically shorten your sentences for convenience, was this at CES?

This isn't for *you*.

[Colin Smith]

Its for places with no charging infrastructure. Places where people have to pay to charge their phones.

The blog is here:
http://solarcharging.nokia.com/

Of course it can...

[cowtamer]

It probably can't charge it for daily use on a phone-sized solar panel, though. It'd still be nice to have some solar panels on the phone so that you could get SOME talk time after 8 hours of charging if you were in the desert or something...

I'm sure if you have a backpack (or larger) charger, you'd be able to charge your phone just fine...

it's not about physics, it's about lifestyle.

[Colin Smith]

http://solarcharging.nokia.com/

Or they could study physics for 5 minutes...

[Anonymous Coward]

Super-efficient photo-electric solar cells in 2012: are about 18% efficient. The total amount of energy coming to earth as provided by the sun at mid-latitudes: 8 watts per square meter. Unless you go out and build another Sun, this number won't change. What also won't change: night time, seasons, and clouds. At noon-day sun in the best of conditions, a 1 square meter panel (39.4 inches x 39.4 inches) produces 1.44 watts. Night time produces nothing. Cloudy days produce less. When the Sun is lower on the horizon, you get less. If the phone needs 2 watts (at full power), you need a panel bigger than 1 meter square. Apart from nuclear power, the sun is the source of all energy on earth. Petroleum comes from animals that eat plants that grow because of photosynthesis which converts solar energy into sugars that makes plants grow. Wood heat comes from trees (hello photosynthesis). Wind is caused by atmospheric heating (solar energy). Wind causes ocean waves. Unless you talk nuclear, its all sun, but you need enough to make a go of it. I have a couple of solar panels. They are oriented away from the sun for the most part (and I can't change that). They are large, and I charge batteries with them. They are effective for that, but I know what the limits of the panels are. Correctly purposed, they are indispensable. But you have to know their limits.

title here is misleading...

[chentiangemalc]

typical slashdot post with title suggesting nokia concluded "the sun can't charge your phone" the article says it can; just not in very practical way yet. As the article concludes: Reasonably good results were also obtained when the tester was able to carry the phone while moving around outdoors, for instance in a holder around his neck. However, this isn’t necessarily the most stylish or convenient arrangement, and another solution is needed. So it is more saying "the sun can't in a practical way charge your phone right now and improvements are needed before it's practical" I'm sure we'll see improvements in phones to become more energy efficient & better solar panels which may make this more practical in the future.

Easy to do.

[WindBourne]

Need to double the electricity.

Who cares about talk time - it is a win for txting

[Anonymous Coward]

My phone is used for various low power computing tasks and some txt. Talk is secondary. Extending the time between docking is a win.

"When carefully positioned, the prototype phones were able, at best, to harvest enough energy to keep the phone on standby mode but with a very restricted amount of talk time"

Even if standby is extended for say 1.5 times - that is a win.

twelve bucks and use muscles

[gl4ss]

twelve bucks and do some cranking. seems much much much more feasible than solar powered right now.

buy one of those 'africa' nokias and a crank charger if you want to be an eco hippie right now..
or just six bucks. http://www.dealextreme.com/p/dynamo-hand-crank-cell-phone-emergency-charger-3669 hell, you can get a phone and a crank for under 50 bucks if you go with ultrabasic nokia(40 dollars for 1280 and that six bucks for crank chager and since it's an 'africa model' it's got a standby of 22 days).

for what's it worth, they've been making those(hand crank chargers) for a decade now, my sister had one with pretty much identical design about ten years ago. if you're going to do some hc wilderness hiking, I'd recommend getting one.

Re:twelve bucks and use muscles

[Anonymous Coward]

There's also other options - I've seen pictures from somewhere in sub-saharan Africa of bikes converted to pedal-powered generators. One of those charging a car battery, an inverter, and you've got a charging station (and an income for the kid pedaling the bike).

Re: External Cells

[itsme1234]

It doesn't work so well, even in theory. 82g (only for the solar panel) and 65 pounds (GBP) would cover multiple spare batteries. And even one battery would bring you more energy than chasing the sun every day for multiple hours the whole week.
Maybe in theory you might "get even" both in terms of weight and price if you have some kind of "base" where you can leave things to charge all day long AND if you are on some multiple weeks expedition without access to any other type of power (from villages, cars, etc). But in most cases no way.
Note that all the commercial "solar" thingies come with some internal battery that needs itself to be charged (and you have a non-solar way to charge it). These small solar panels wouldn't even start charging a smart(ish) modern phone by themselves as those phones are drawing 500-800 mA and they usually can provide 100-200mA.

Not enough solar? How about...

[geekprime]

How about one of those self winding watch mechanisms then?

Re:Not enough solar? How about...

[bugs2squash]

or for more motion strap it to the lower leg while hiking. I've even seen generating heel inserts.

Re:Not enough solar? How about...

[Demonoid-Penguin]

How about one of those self winding watch mechanisms then?

Like a Green phone for tossers?

"fap fap" I'm charging my phone "fap fap" - they could tweet with one hand and charge with the other "fap fap".

Tailor made opportunity for Facebook to get into the mobile phone business. The Facebook "fhone" - with the environmentally friendly charging system "fap fap".

I'm betting Microsoft already has a patent on it - Steve Balmer has probably been testing it himself - monkeyboy dancing and charging. "Developers!" "fap fap" "Developers!" "fap fap" "It's a Nokia!" "fap fap".

they needed this for communities without electrici

[gl4ss]

they needed this for communities without electricity.
the next, or last, billion. it's not like Nokia's business to go there and build a power grid.

However, it's nokias business to sell them phones and them having phones might actually help them to get on the electrical grid, by connecting people and all that jazz. so what they need is cheap solutions for people who have very little money and no access to an electrical socket. long standby phones is one, so the phone can be charged on the weekly trip to some bigger community centre. mechanical chargers seem more feasible at this time than solar too. they're cheaper and charging is faster.

and getting those people connected accelerates their regional advancement quite lot. for example if they do have a phone, that enables access to banking, advice services, information services, makes it easier to coordinate with your extended family unit etc, again accelerating progress..

emergencies

[SuperBanana]

Let's say you live in an area where the power goes out occasionally. You need medical assistance. Or someone is trying to break into your house. Or your house is on fire. Or there's a tree down across your driveway, and it's a 20 minute drive into town. And it's snowing like crazy.

Would you rather have a phone which goes dead and stays dead? Or would you rather have a phone you've been able to keep in the window, off, but charging off the sun, which you can now flip on and make a call with?

You're hiking with a friend. Your cell phone runs out of battery because GPS used a lot more power than you expected trying to find your way to the site.

Your friend falls and breaks their ankle.

Would you rather have that solar panel, and be able to make send a text/make a short phone call to emergency services after a 30 minute stint in the sun? Or would you rather save $5 on the cost of the phone?

An earthquake hits your city. Power is knocked out across the area. You end up at a shelter. You can keep your phone off but charge it in daylight - enough to power it up and make a call or send a text to a loved one saying you're OK.

There are lots of situations where having a solar panel on the back of the phone would be pretty handy.

Re:emergencies

[itsme1234]

Would you rather have that solar panel, and be able to make send a text/make a short phone call to emergency services after a 30 minute stint in the sun? Or would you rather save $5 on the cost of the phone?

You're making a logical error called false dichotomy, look it up.
There are other choices beside having a dead phone and a dead phone plus solar panel (albeit included solar panel).
For example you can have an extra battery, that would give you hours of talk (which you would get after weeks in the sun, if the suns come from behind the clouds at all).
Ok, you might think you aren't forced to carry extra battery with you but you would be forced to carry the solar panel if it's built in the phone (so the panel might have somehow an advantage). Then how about a battery 20% larger and a phone that turns itself off when you have only 20% battery left? Size and money-wise would be about the same as the solar panel option but certainly much better understood and easily to implement. Then you'll get in any case at least one hour of talk (which you would get otherwise after maybe one day of solar charging). And you don't have to wait for the next morning (or next season) to make you EMERGENCY call.
Yes, "there are lots of situations where having a solar panel on the back of the phone would be pretty handy" but there are other (similarly priced/sized) things to be included which are even handiER.

Re:they needed this for communities without electr

[Anonymous Coward]

they needed this for communities without electricity.

My phone has a battery in it with 3.7V and 1300mah. My old high school memories tell me that P=IV, so 1300mah*3.7V = 4.8Wh.

From wikipedia:

120 W – tech: power output of 1 m2 solar panel in full sunlight (approx. 12% efficiency), at sea level.

120/4.8 = 25.

I don't think that communities without a electricity-distribution network are worrying for ways to charge their cell-phones. Get some PV panels out there, or a hand-cranked generator will do the job nicely.

Wrong direction...

[Anonymous Coward]

These days phones are gluttons for power. Why don't they research into finding a way to seriously diminish the amount of power necessary to use the phone instead of trying to charge a power hungry cell phone off a tiny solar panel? Nanotechnology is still only starting to see more play now but even with non-nano equipment, phones really have nowhere to go but up in terms of efficiency...

Alternative to Solar?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think everyone is looking at this article from the wrong perspective. Ultimately, I don't think that current solar cell technology is efficient enough to charge a phone battery, however a better alternative (presuming we could fit it in existing phone casings) is the kind of charger that works on shaking/body movement.... you know those flashlights you shake? Well most of us keep our phones in our pockets and I think it would be great if our body movement (walking, running, etc) was able to charge the phone as it shakes in our pocket... whether it can developed in an efficient and small enough package is a different story....

Re:they needed this for communities without electr

[thsths]

> so what they need is cheap solutions for people who have very little money and no access to an electrical socket.

Maybe they should include a portable solar panel instead of a charger? 10cm x 10cm should be enough to generate a decent amount of power in the sun.

Having the solar cell on the mobile phone is a bad idea in so many ways that it is hardly worth commenting on.

What a dumb idea!

[Demonoid-Penguin]

Lets say it was feasible - wouldn't it require you to *leave* your phone in the sun somewhere.....? What could possibly go wrong?

It's hardly fucking rocket science to calculate the ability of a given number of particular type of solar cell to charge a certain battery - yet we're asked to believe this was undertaken "as a trial", with the intention of marketing the end product? Seriously? No drugs involved?

The same surface area covered in the best cells will barely charge a battery sufficient to run a small LED torch under average conditions in Australia. And if you can't get enough sunlight in Australia you're in trouble - and don't forget things tend to get hot in the sun.

Disclaimer: I've only built self-charging remote devices a couple of times - for mobile phones - and each time the real life charge times were pretty close to the design. I'm not a qualified electronic engineer, or particularly good - maybe I just got lucky.

What is the problem?

[Tanuki64]

Just invent a folding solar cell panel. Usually stored in the phone, while charging unfolded to a size of at least 1m^2.

They were holding it wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

those testers needed to listen to their inner Jobs

Why is this unsurprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Not surprisingly, the prototype phone, which had a solar panel on the back cover, performed better in Kenya than in other testing locations, like southern Sweden and the Arctic Circle.

The Arctic Circle have 24 hours of sun/day in the summer. Southern Sweden has 18h sun light/day in the summer. Kenya must have at most less then 10 hours (I'm guessing, I’m not an astronomer or meteorologist). Over a full year, you generally (if you are not in a cloudy area) get more sun hours and sun energy the further you get from the Equator and the closer you get to the Arctic Circle.

There are more solar energy each year distributed at the Polar Circle then there is at the Equator. During the summer crop season, there is twice as much solar energy distributed over the fields of S. Sweden then there is over the fields of S. Italy (but of course, a farmer in S. Sweden have at most two crop season, if he choose two very fast growing and temperature hardy crops and sow the spring crop in the fall (the seed will start growing when the soil gets thawed), most crops grown in Sweden take both the spring and fall seasons to grow (hence called summer crop)). During summer crop season, there is more then twice as much solar energy distributed over N. Sweden (at the Arctic Circle) then there is in S. Sweden. During winter N. Sweden has no daylight, but during summer it has 24 h daylight.

As solar energy is distributed over more time, the energy that is released each moment at the Arctic Circle (even during the summer) is weaker then that released at the Equator. Apart from being weaker it is also distributed at different frequencies. Solar power can't be collected as effectively by the solar panels of today at the Arctic Circle as it can at the Equator and the energy can't be stored effectively for the dark season; but that could change with the solar panels and energy storage solutions of tomorrow.

Solar charging was released 1997, by Nokia...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://press.nokia.com/1997/01/15/the-nonstop-nokia-1611-features-the-unique-solar-battery-option-nokia-introduces-the-most-mobile-phone-under-the-sun/

I am really not surprised that current engineering are inadequate for this... Nokia had best engineering skills in the 90's, today, not so much..

Sure you do

[Lennie]

Acquire the original Sun, charge everyone money for all the different spectrums of the rays of the sun.

Atleast if Oracle was the one doing the acquiring.

Re:Sure you do

[unixisc]

There's a good reason Larry didn't acquire the sun. Larry could visit Sun Microsystems hq in Palo Alto and talk to employees there. But if, otoh, he took a trip to the sun...

Re:Sure you do

[tehcyder]

I thought it was because he couldn't stand the idea of not being the brightest guy in the room.

When I think about it.....

[Tanuki64]

...what kind of 'research' is this? IMHO quality of an slightly above average problem for some school homework.

Should not be too difficult to get the average/max power you can get from todays solar cells. The average usable area for solar cells on a cell phone is no secret either. I suppose when I google a bit I can easily find data about power consumption in cell phones. The rest is simply, let me exaggerate a bit, the application of the rule of proportion. To call this 'research'... ridiculous.

1W??

[Anonymous Coward]

"cell phones blast out a fair bit of RF power, on the order of 1 W,"

Holy crap, what decade do you think this is?

Re:1W??

[plover]

"cell phones blast out a fair bit of RF power, on the order of 1 W,"

Holy crap, what decade do you think this is?

He's still wondering why his analog bag phone stopped ringing back in 2008.

That woosh you heard

[drainbramage]

was called Maria.

Re:That woosh you heard

[youn]

Maria... is that the database lady? I hear she is cute :p

Should have done the math

[Hentes]

If they had done the math before testing they could have saved themselves the costs.

Dear researchers..

[Lumpy]

DUH. 10 seconds with a calculator would have told you this BEFORE you fricking made a prototype and flew all over the planet testing it....

Wait..... I get it!

I have a great idea for a product, I need to go to Hawaii for 4 weeks to test it.

Honestly the article is stupid. I regularly charge an iphone and an IPAD in 2 hours with a solar panel, in fact I also run a laptop off of it while they charge.

Yes, it's a larger 3 panel fold out array I have for camping, but I'm still charging on solar.

They need to clarify, you CANT charge a cellphone in a reasonable amount of time with a $1.99 garbage cell glued to the back of a cellphone. Their design was no better than taking a couple of solar panels from yard lights and thinking they were innovative.

Re:Dear researchers..

[iamhassi]

Honestly the article is stupid. I regularly charge an iphone and an IPAD in 2 hours with a solar panel, in fact I also run a laptop off of it while they charge.

Yes, it's a larger 3 panel fold out array I have for camping, but I'm still charging on solar.

They need to clarify, you CANT charge a cellphone in a reasonable amount of time with a $1.99 garbage cell glued to the back of a cellphone. Their design was no better than taking a couple of solar panels from yard lights and thinking they were innovative.

Doubly stupid because solar chargers for smartphones already exist. I can read the customer reviews and tell you it doesn't work.

Good thing this study wasn't government funded.

Why use the sun?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a better idea: microwave emitters in every city to charge our phones wirelessly. Side effects may include skin burns and strange sparks on metallic surfaces, but hey.

Duh!

[Cro Magnon]

I could have told them that solar power works better in Kenya or Arizona than it does in Sweden, London, or Oregon.

What would work....

[Tyr07]

With the way they're advancing solar cells, incorporating them even into paper. Yes, they have printed solar cells. (Here:http://www.pcworld.com/article/235667/mit_prints_solar_cells_on_paper_but_are_they_recyclable.html)

How effective, well, that's another story but the point is it can be done. What we need is basically a solar weave, something that incorporates solar technology into clothing. So you can wear clothes that almost look identical to regular clothes, except that it has micro-solar weaving through out to generate electricity.

If you're needing some warmer clothing it could be a bit heavier with piezoelectric weave that generates energy on movement. Naturally this would be more useful in colder climates that have less sunlight as it would make the clothes naturally a little heavier / thicker and warmer.

So through a combination of piezoelectric / solar weave clothing, you could probably generate enough power to charge or at least greatly extend your phones battery life. Could even have clothing that creates an induction field, just like certain 'wireless' phone charges do, then no wires, just battery charging/extending.
(Inductive charging: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_charging)

E Ink

[tepples]

If you don't care about displaying video or color illustrations, a black-and-white tablet with an E Ink display uses next to no power.

Heh

[squidflakes]

I was working for Nokia when they first came out with the solar battery charger on the back of the handset. At the time, the 2120 and 2160 models could accept those batteries, and the cells had no problem with the power requirements. Unlimited stand-by time while in the sun and something like 20 hours of talk time, in 1996, was astounding.

Of course, the 21xx series of phones isn't exactly what you'd call high-end these days. I still have one and when I'm not marveling at it's 8 lines of text on the massive 2 inch LCD screen, I'm amazed by it's nearly microscopic 1.5 inch width and ability to connect to CDMA AND AMPS cellular systems.

The plastic pull-out whip antenna is just that extra bit of bling that pushes this phone over the edge of cool.

Odd idea

[jopet]

Should not some math have been enough to calculate the amount of available energy and figure out if, for typical efficiencies of solar cells, it is enough?
Also, the idea of using light to recharge the battery would either require see-through pockets and bags (because the pockets and bags cell phones normally are in during the day, are pitch dark) or that the sun shines during the night (when cell phones are usually less used and being recharged).

Misleading subject is misleading.

[Anonymous Coward]

This subject is horribly misleading. Nokia said, In fact that it charges the phone quite fine, running it on the other hand is a whole different issue. Nokia pretty much said unless you want a phone the size of a barn door we wont be running phones on solar any time soon but solar chargers do work.

Proof...

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

That Nokia is in a death spiral from top-tier cell phone manufacture to novelty act.

Nokia?

[Trogre]

Oh right, they used to be a cell phone company didn't they? Then Microsoft bought them or something.

So they've concluded that your call phone, which spends what 99% of its time hidden in pockets, bags, etc, cannot be charged by the sun. They now plan to invest $10m to determine if you can fry an egg underwater.

Not the first time...

[Anonymous Coward]

They tried that already for a laptop. I think they were trying to create a low-cost laptop that could be distributed in Africa, in areas where there might be no electricity. They ended up equipping it with a crankhandle.

Solar would be a good way to supplement power

[Penmanpro]

I do not see why we are writing this idea off. I still want one. It would extend battery life between charges, and get me that all important emergency text after the wall charge is lost. I remember the first generation of mobile batteries: after they phone ran out of power, if you leave them alone for 20min would give you enough power for one more text. It was often very useful.

If they can't do it I can...

[Anonymous Coward]

I will not say how it is possible but I will say that I know for a fact that it is possible ... And any company not doing so will be doing so for extended battery life at least in the near future to say that it will not work is utter stupidity on there part it will not work to charge the phone but will it allow the phone to charge enough not to have to put it on the charger with there current design. Hell even there current design is enough to make people happy. Once you put these things on products to lengthen the life of a charge advancements will take place if we never put solar panels anyway the research into making it a possibility will never take place... There has been much research done and with the scientific proofs available I am 100% sure it could be made to work ;)

To clarify the phones thickness may increase a bit but for most people this would be a fair trade. And there have been other solar like discoveries in 2011 that could potentially charge the phone in your pocket ;)

There is plenty of information here to chew on but I've done the research and did it freely at that.

I can be found at www.mopowah.com if you care to reach me.

The key is...

[Anonymous Coward]

I kinda like the idea of somebody adding a wind-up charger to a smartphone, like the kind they have in some torches and radios. :-)