Hasta La Gadget!

Looks like the rumors we heard were true: august cordwainer Puma has teamed up with Sagem to make a phone — and it’s quite a looker, too. The Puma Phone (as it’s called) is a lightweight little guy that boasts an integrated solar cell for charging and charge indicator to let you know how you’re doing on juice, a QVGA TFT 2.8-inch capacitive touchscreen, plus a 3.2 megapixel cam with LED flash and 6x zoom. It also packs in GPS, a compass and geotagging, plus it’s got a host of ‘sporty’ features (pedometer, stopwatch and GPS tracker)… if you’re into an active lifestyle. This bad boy can be strapped to your arm when you’re on the go, but don’t blame us if it doesn’t score you any points with the passersby. The Puma Phone will be available throughout Europe in April of this year — no word on pricing or availability elsewhere yet. The full press release is after the break.

Continue reading Puma joins forces with Sagem to birth the Puma Phone

Puma joins forces with Sagem to birth the Puma Phone originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Feb 2010 11:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Let’s be honest, we’d scorch the Earth to eke just one more hour of power from our superphones. Fortunately, as residents of the western world we’ve got plenty of juice to power all of our gadgets. Still, we can definitely see the attraction of a solar-powered cellphone meant for the peoples of developing nations living off the grid. Throw in a flashlight and you’ve just changed somebody’s life. That’s what we’ve got in the ZTE S316, a dead simple candybar with color display and torch. Also announced is the S101 charger with its own built-in flashlight that can be used to charge select, non-solar devices and costs just $12 to $13, maybe less on volume. The third solar device comes from China’s OKWAP and is built by Inventec. The $40 GS109 (pictured above) feature phone is destined, believe it or not, to be an object of ultimate desire when slung from the neck on a lanyard as proof of ones prosperity. Spec-wise, this dual-SIM solar-powered phone packs a video camera, color display, microSD slot, MP3 player, and even Bluetooth 2.1 — a lot of features for a solar phone.

Linking the three devices is Intivations SunBoost solar conversion technology allowing the devices to charge in conditions less than ideal. The ZTE S316, for example, draws a max of about 113mA when on a call, while the solar cell pumps out about 50mA to 60mA of juice depending upon the natural lighting conditions (it even charges when cloudy). That’s about two minutes of natural light exposure required for every minute of talk time to keep the device going. The solar cell on the GS109, meanwhile, produces about 70mA in direct sunlight to keep the device humming. Remember, the idea isn’t to charge a phone from 0% to full but to keep a device continually charged at about 70% to 80%. Intivation is so confident in its tech that it claims to provide “a far better charging experience than anything else on the market today.” Both the S316 and S101 charger will be available in April while the relatively swank GS109 will hit next month. See them all in the gallery below.

ZTE and OKWAP team with Intivation to deliver next generation solar devices originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Feb 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This week at Inhabitat we saw several hot advances in solar technology that stand to shape how our buildings are built and how we power the electronics in our lives. CASE in point: this beautiful glass photovoltaic system can be affixed to windows and actually magnifies the available sunlight inside into tiny solar chips to create electricity.

In other photovoltaic news, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania just unveiled the world’s first solar-powered circuits. These tiny chips may one day be integrated directly within computer touch screens, essentially transforming them into multitasking solar panels.

We’re also excited to see that the finalists of the 2010 Greener Gadgets Design Competition have been announced. Two of our favorites right off the bat are these wind turbine streetlights that harvest energy from passing cars and Rocco, the kinetic energy-generating rocking horse. Check out all the entries and vote for your favorite!

This week was a big week for efficient aviation as we learned of Portugal’s plans to replace PVC airplane parts with lightweight cork and watched as Seymourpowell floated a fantastic plan for a fuel-cell powered luxury airship.

Finally, the states may be getting charged for Super Bowl Sunday, but youth in Africa are kicking around a different kind of football — one capable of generating energy in off-grid locations. We also saw a similar concept called the swirl ball that makes doing laundry a blast – fill it full of clothes and water and then kick it around until they’re clean.

Inhabitat’s Week in Green: photovoltaics, footballs, and Greener Gadgets originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Feb 2010 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Solar-charged batteries aren’t exactly wow factors these days, unless they’re dirt cheap like this Scosche solBAT II. With 1,500mAh of juice, this dongle can carry slightly more power than your average smartphone, and can also take any device with a USB cable. However, before you fork out $29.99 to Scosche, you should know that the solBAT takes between four to five days (!) to charge up fully under sunlight — not ideal for most power-hungry smartphones nowadays. There’s always the $93.23 Energizer SP2000 (2,000mAh) for your consideration — it’s bulkier, but with three solar panels it only needs six hours of solar-charge time. Guess we’ll just take the faster one, thanks.

Continue reading Scosche solBAT II collects solar power, distributes it to USB devices

Scosche solBAT II collects solar power, distributes it to USB devices originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Feb 2010 14:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Alright, so self-assembling electronics are hardly new in and of themselves, and nanoscale tech tends to always come with bombastic promises, but you don’t wanna miss how this latest innovation is built. Two professors from the University of Minnesota have successfully demonstrated a self-assembly technique that arranges microscopic electronic elements in their proper order thanks to the absolute enmity that exists between water and oil. By coating elements with a hydrophilic layer on one side and some hypdrophobic goo on the other, they’ve achieved the proper element orientation, and the final step in their work was the insertion of a pre-drilled, pre-soldered sheet, which picks up each element while being slowly drawn out of the liquid non-mixture. The achievement here is in finding the perfect densities of water and oil to make the magic happen, and a working device of 64,000 elements has been shown off — taking only three minutes to put together. If the method’s future proves successful, we’ll all be using electronics built on flexible, plastic, metal, or otherwise unconventional substrates sometime soon.

Self-assembling solar cells built using ancient wisdom, modern technology originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Jan 2010 09:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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