Wednesday 25 July, 2001
Mains Free Mobiles
A wind-up mobile phone charger is to go on sale later this year. It's been developed by the company that invented the clockwork radio, and will be produced in collaboration with the phone manufacturer Motorola.
BBC Science reports.
Clockwork Mobile Phones
As mobile phone technology advances, handsets get smaller and lighter and can perform more and more functions; but they're still useless if the battery runs out, and you don't have a power source at hand to recharge it.
The Freeplay company aims to solve that problem with its new hand-cranked charger. Rather than storing energy in a spring, as in Freeplay's clockwork radios, the unit will charge a phone's battery directly, or will be able to store power in its own battery, until the phone needs it.
However, the new device is not likely to take over completely from chargers that use mains electricity. It will give five to six minutes' talking time from 30 seconds of winding; but to recharge a phone fully would take about 30 minutes of extremely hard work.
Concerns have already been expressed over the portable nature of the charger. The current prototype is reported to weigh more than 200 grammes. With many mobile phones now weighing less than a 100 grammes, few users will want to carry the charger around with them.
| ‘The makers foresee it being used on trips away from power sources, and in those limited regions of the world where mains electricity is not available, but where there is cell phone coverage.’ | |
Currently images of the prototype charger are unavailable, but Freeplay hope to keep to a product launch date of November, with the charger going on sale in America and Europe before being sold in shops in Asia and Africa.
Wind-Up World
The charger will carry the Motorola brand, but the adaptor cables will be available to connect it to most makes of phone.
A spokesperson for Freeplay commented that he hoped that this would be the beginning of many joint operations and that future ventures may include a wind-up lap top computer.
The wind-up mobile project hopes to achieve a similar success in mobile communications that the windup radio achieved in listening.
In 1991 Trevor Baylis set about developing the worlds first wind up radio. In 1994 his first prototype was completed and ran for 14 minutes.
By 1997 the Freeplay radio was in mass production and could run for up to an hour after only 20 seconds of winding.
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In 1991 Trevor Baylis saw a BBC television report about the spread of Aids in Africa and felt compelled to develop a low cost radio that could be used to transmit health and safety information.
The result was the, now famous, wind up radio that in 1995 became the subject of a QED programme broadcast on BBC television.
In 1996 Baylis was awarded the BBC Design Award for Best Product and Best Design. |
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Christmas 2000 saw the UK’s love affair with the mobile phone reach its peak.
Vodafone, the world's biggest mobile phone network operator, said it had added 1.42 million net new subscribers in the fourth quarter of last year, taking its UK total to 11.66 million.
Worldwide, Vodafone lifted its customer base by 13.2 million to 78.7 million by the end of the year.
In the past year France Telecom-owned Orange has reported how it doubled its UK customer base to 9.8 million. Some 6.8 million of these are pre-pay users. |
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