Nokia: the Sun Can't Charge Your Phone 290
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."
Why did they think this would work? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Wait what? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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:Why did they think this would work? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So basically (Score:4, Insightful)
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:Why did they think this would work? (Score:4, Insightful)
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:My cocktail napkin agrees (Score:2, Insightful)
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?