This Nokia project takes place in Sweden, Kenya, the Arctic and the middle of the Baltic Sea, which includes beta testers that are proving the usability of this new cell phone. The project will last three months, and in this period Nokia will try to see if it would be a good idea to develop cheap and effective cell phone that will work on sun power. Their first prototype is called Lokki, which uses a stick-on solar panel combined with a data logger.
So far, they are not very optimistic about this project, considering the many issues that are stopping it in order to become reality. First of all, the phones use a lot of power. Even if the phone is on standby, it sucks down a lot of power, meaning that every owner of such a solar cellphone must be very careful while using it. The phone must be directly exposed to the Sun power, as much as possible and you will have to “consume the energy” reasonably. I bet most of the users will not see this as a smart and acceptable solution.
Another issue is the price of the solar panels. Compared to other kinds of chargers, which are almost free, the solar panels ave very expensive. And in our case, the usability and the price does not go along, meaning that the consumers that are willing to pay a lot of money for a good cell phone, they would probably need it for something more than just calls and messages. We`ll see, there are three months left. I bet, England will not be very happy about this technology. Or maybe, they will discover rain powered cellphones? :)Just kidding, we hope for the cheap..I mean, the best;)
