You can choose to love or hate Nokia, but can’t deny their standing as the leading innovators for last so many years. Nokia, now seems to revolutionise the way we charge our phones. They are seriously giving a push to “wireless Charging” with Lumia 920 and 820. Now, in a more interesting innovation, they are proposing to replace electricity consuming chargers with “Portable Solar chargers”.
The charger uses a thin-film panel, and it comes with a 3 meter long cable and 2mm Nokia plug interface. It’s highly portable at just 93g, and just one minute of charging offers around two minutes of talk time.
The Portable Solar Charger is part of a project where Nokia is exploring the charging opportunities for people who do not have access to the electricity grid. Kenya and Nigeria provide the perfect opportunity for testing this solution as recent World Bank reports indicate that only 16 and 51 per cent of Kenyans and Nigerians respectively had regular access to electricity between 2007 and 2011. Thousands of people in Nigeria and Kenya are set to pilot the Solar Charger. The pilot will be studied to see the product’s business potential, usage patterns, the environmental and social impacts, and whether it could be introduced for full commercial production.
“Sales of the Solar Charger will start this week, and we’re very excited to see what the public response will be,” says Petteri Alinikula, from Nokia’s Sustainability team.
