Why Nokia needs to get off their ass and make a solar charger for the emerging markets
By Stefan Constantinescu on Wednesday, December 26th, 2007 at 11:28 PM PST In Nokia
Just read this snippet of news on textually titled “Villagers walk 20 kms to charge mobile phones” and it just made me shake my head in dismay. Someone needs to do something to give these people power where the only infrastructure these people know is the cellular network. All this talk of being a green company, yet renewable energy is one facet that has yet to be explored, especially for countries where people need it the most.
There are plenty of solar solutions out there, but they’re expensive.
I thought the same thing when I wrote about this situation. But I realized that if the villagers are living in such poverty that they don’t have electricity, then they probably don’t have money for a solar charger.
Solar power is expensive to generate…
Probably is theres an philanthropic arm of Nokia.. they should install free solar powered mobile chargers
There are other ways than solar to generate enough electricity to charge. I have a little hand-cranked cell phone charger that cost maybe $10. Perhaps Nokia could make a version of that as an accessory for places without electricity?
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Korean-Ktech-n93-Solar-Power-PDA-MP3-Phone-Bluetooth_W0QQitemZ150197738390QQihZ005QQcategoryZ3312QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
There’s a relatively cheap chinese phone with in-built solar charging; just turn he phone on it’s face and it will charge!
It’s already cheap for a phone so if they stripped it down to maybe the bare essentials it could come out maybe
This is a great opportunity for Nokia to step up and really show that they are in the business of “connecting people.” Granted, no company is required to do anything of this nature, but it would be great publicity and may encourage other comapanies to step up as well.
In the meantime, lets get these people some of these handcranks that Phoneboy is using -