Design

NOKIA DESIGN EVENT: Charging without waste

By James on 29 April 2008

LONDON, England – Research shows that the majority of mobile users
charge their phone whilst they’re asleep. Given that a typical phone
charges in under an hour, and most people sleep between six and eight
hours, means that’s a lot of wasted energy.

With roughly a billion chargers in circulation, the motivation to create one that emits zero waste is huge.

Rhys Newman and the future product design team have produced nine prototype chargers which produce zero waste. Looking at the possibilities the team came up with three basic concepts.

The first uses a button to charge, so leaving it plugged in means it doesn’t draw power and the user needs to hit the (green) button to set the charge in motion. The second simply charges the device for one hour before switching itself off whilst the third concept actually has a conversation with the device, where the device lets the charger know when it needs power, and when it’s all done.

That last is the ultimate objective but the team still have a way to go to make it happen. Right now the first is real and working and, I hope, will see it’s way into production before too long. Meanwhile Newman and his team are using the chargers every day, living with them and learning from them so one day we can all reap the benefits.

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Monadi Says:
May 1st, 2008 at 8:11 am

It would be amazing when the third solution would be available. Once the phone is charged to 100%, the circuitry in the charger would halt the charge, so the phone is effectively on it’s own. Once the battery on the phone drops to say 90% or 95%, the charging process is reinitialized.
The second method not only needs to address how long it usually takes for a phone to charge completely, it also needs to consider that people might still use power intensive processes (such as Wi-Fi or 3G) while the phone is charging, which normally increases the recharge time.