Nokero solar phone charger targets the poor

It is said that “500 million of the world’s cell phone owners have no access to electricity” – at least according to a Hong Kong and Denver-based company who claims that solar power charging panels are the solution to this question. It does make me wonder though, are there 500 million people in this world who know that they have no access to electricity, and yet proceeded to purchase a cell phone? I do doubt those statistics as it just doesn’t make that much sense, it would be as though purchasing a car without having access to gas stations. I digress – Nokero’s intention to help this half billion people gain portable power to juice up their hungry handsets has resulted in solar-power charging panels that were specially designed without costing too much.

The 1-watt P101 is capable of juicing up a typical cell phone in just three hours, while the 2-watt P102 will theoretically shorten the charging time by half, because of a doubling in power. These pocket-sized panels will play nice with USB ports, where it will come with relevant phone adapters.

The P101 is surprisingly affordable at $29 a pop, although we think most people would be better off with the more capable P102 at $49, which is nearly double the price. This is still well above the target price for the market they are supposed to appear in, so hopefully more can be done to lower the final price point.

Edwin Kee
Categories: Cellphones, Gadgets, Green
Tags: Solar, solar charger, solar power