Samsung has unveiled what might just be the greenest cell phone ever in Barcelona this week – the solar-powered ‘Blue Earth’, which is made from recycled water bottles. The details are slow in coming, but we do know that the phone will have a touch screen and a pedometer that calculates how much CO2 you save each time you choose to walk instead of drive. An energy-saving mode will lower the backlight levels and switch off Bluetooth, and the solar panel provides enough juice to keep the phone going indefinitely.
Wired’s Gadget Lab is less than enthused, saying “This is just annoying, and exactly the sort of thing smug Prius owners would like. It reminds me of the kind of vegan who eats wholemeal pasta — a form of self flagellation designed only to telegraph their pious intentions to us less morally aware mortals.”
While smug Prius owners will undoubtedly love this phone, that doesn’t make it any less awesome (and how is owning a cool piece of green gadgetry self-flagellation?). Using the sun to power small gadgets is undeniably smart – think about how much energy will be saved if even a fraction of mobile phone users switch (only after their current phones croak, of course).
Samsung isn’t the only mobile company that announced a solar-powered phone at the Mobile World Congress 2009. LG has one of their own, with solar panels embedded into the battery cover – it’ll be released in the European market by the end of the year.
