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.

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

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?

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.

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.

On to the next idea

[Megahard]

A nuclear powered phone.

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.

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?