Traditional battery manufacturing giants such as Gillette and Energizer Holdings, while dominating the world of electronics, have had minor impact in the fast growing mobile business. That might very well change …. soon.
I recently chanced up a AA Lithium battery-based charge pack made by Energizer Holdings, that uses some amazing circuitry allows you to charge your mobile phone, at least one or two times.
Till recently, you could buy big and bulky AA (or AAA) battery based charger packs and use them to charge electronic devices. Many of them were bigger than the “charger” itself, and were clunky and cumbersome to tote around.
Energizer charge-pack is actually pretty sleek — almost like an iChat camera on Atkins diet – and weighs next to nothing. It has a top port, where you can attach a small charge cable (one end looks almost like a headphone pin) which can then fit into the mobile phone socket. I saw one that worked well with Nokia phones.
St. Louis, Missouri-based Energizer, well known for its (mildly annoying) Energizer Bunny advertisements, was showing off this cylindrical tube type device at the 3GSM, some of my sources tell me, and in fact it might be the best gizmo on display there.
Why? Because, cellphones have an uncanny way of losing charge in middle of nowhere. And most of the time, most, if not all of us, tend to forget our chargers at home, especially when flying overseas. AA-batteries are pretty easy to find pretty much all across the planet this could be a device that become indispensable for globetrotters.
These type of charge-packs could easily become the transitionary devices before fuel cells become mainstream. A lot of start-ups such as Energy Related Devices, Inc., are currently developing small fuel cells for mobile phones, portable electronic devices and laptops. (I wrote about this trend for Business 2.0 last year.)
PS: Sorry for the photo quality. I do need to get myself a digital camera. These cellphone camera are not cutting the mustard, so to speak. Any suggestions?
I recently upgraded, or rather supplemented my Panasonic FZ3 with a Nikon D50 SLR.
I think it is hard to go wrong in the DSLR market. It’s easy to get caught up in measurbation, fretting over each an every spec. Don’t worry too much about specs, all the cameras are good enough. See if the compromises made by the manufacturer fit your usage profile, first. Then make sure the ergonomics are good. That has been the deciding factor in all my camera purchases. If it doesn’t feel right, you’ll leave it at home.
On the point-n-shoot side, I really like the newer Panasonic FZ5-7 models. The image stabilized 12x zooms mean you are able to get photos that you just couldn’t with lesser lenses. The ergos are quite nice too, if you aren’t looking for a shirt-pocketable camera.
Compact Power Systems Inc. has already made a disposable cellphone battery charger called Cellboost (www.cellboost.com). It give 60 hours of standby time, 60 min. of talk time, and charges the phone while you talk. They have rechargable and chargable version for most electronic devices. Even though I haven’t seen the charge pack up front, from the looks of things Cellboost is MUCH smaller as well.
Om, on the camera; how about the Nokia N90 you had or the N71? Both take terriffic pictures. as a point of comparison, here’s the same device shot from my N90 (http://mobilecrunch.com/2006/03/06/3gsm-world-congress-report-energizer-and-techtium-introduce-battery-technology/) Not perfect, but that’s more an artifact of the web than the camera…and it isn’t a bad phone either.
Now regarding the Tectium product vs. cellboost, your size contention is incorrect, the duration of charge is that the Techtium device provides is nearly 2 and a half charges on many phones from a single AA battery. The other advantage is that you don’t need a charger or a proprietary battery. In essence this is an akaline battery powered fuel cell one that’s a lot more convenient than carrying rechargers, cheaper than the aforementioned cellboost over just a few uses. Oh yeah. And unlike methanol or hydrogen the airlines have no problem with a few more alkaline batteries and you can be pretty sure that unless you try really hard, these are not all that likely to explode.
Om, I was checking out of a store yesterday and found a product that looks really similar called Charge2go. It can be found at chargetogo.com . It came packaged with a Duracell AA.
Check out this one. It’s much better looking!
http://www.turbocellcharge.com