A few days ago a friend of mine texted me asking about how hard it would be to embed solar panels in a low cost cellphone, so that individuals who for whatever reason were trying to get established, would have some way to communicate with their healthcare provider, parole officer, who ever they needed to reach out to to get back on their feet. The core sentiment is an excellent one, provide a resource for those who are at the greatest risk to engage with society, my primary point of feedback was the power output of the solar panel. Even under the best circumstances the available surface area of a cellphone would have a hard time collecting enough sunlight to conveniently charge a cellphone. (I may do the math showing this later, but for the moment I am just going to keep the work conceptual)
Just because a cellphone would have a hard time being charged by sunlight does not mean we as a society couldn't create a device that would be truly useful to those less enfranchised.
Whatever design that is eventually developed it will need to meet a rather challenging list of constraints. The design suggestions I am putting forth below are just one way a product could be designed to meet a user's needs but I feel it would represent what individuals might desire in their smart device. My temporary title for this phone is the FreshStart, if someone in marketing wants to change it, great, I never said I was great at naming things.
The biggest limiting factor is cost, no matter how you want to slice it the primary customers of our starter phone are not the end users, but organizations that need to be able to buy hundreds, if not thousands of devices without destroying their budget. While I have no idea how much per unit either the governments of the world or non-profits would be willing to go, I am going to assume that these phones are being distributed in countries like the US and as such a maximum price of $50 is far from unreasonable. Current Nokia feature phones cost something like $30 so it shouldn't be that unreasonable to keep the dollar cost of the device close to that.
After cost comes reliability, the device needs to be physically tough and have a very high endurance. Users may not be guaranteed the opportunity to charge their phone every day and so the battery capacity should reflect the need for going several days without charging.
Close after reliability is attractiveness of the device, users need to feel like the phone they are getting is something important and worth holding onto, it may be free to them, but it should also be something that they value for more than the phone calls.
So far I am reasonably describing currently available feature phones, many now have very excellent run times, so long as they are only used for calls and texting they can work for days. Personally I enjoy the simple look of the Nokia style brick phones (this could be a result of early 2000's nostalgia.) What would be a distinguishing characteristic of the design is integrating the charger, the majority of phones require you to have a second piece of hardware to charge your phone. By integrating the charger you are reducing the number of things someone has to keep track of. The FreshStart's back would have a simple two prong A/C connector that would allow the device to be directly plugged into a wall outlet. To compliment the A/C adapter and to acknowledge the fact that individuals are mobile and may not have a long period of time near an outlet, for example the time it takes for them to finish their coffee, the FreshStart would have part of its battery capacity be a non-removable high endurance rapid charging element, either an ultra-capacitor or an optimized breed of battery that I can't think of right now. This batter would be intended to charge in under 2 minutes while providing enough energy for ten times or more run time, ideally several hours of use.
Additional features that would be nice but not required, built in USB ports to allow other devices to charge while the phone itself charges, a USB plug to allow the use of charging ports that are now showing up in cities, a flashlight, an E-Ink display.
As of now this is as far as I've gotten with the FreshStart's concept, when I get back to my desktop with CADsoftware I will try to create a 3-D render.
some follow up links, here is a case for the Iphone 5 that has the charger in built as suggested http://www.amazon.com/Prong-PocketPlug-Case-Protective-built/dp/B00F0X1JUC
and here is where I got the Nokia price point
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2865184/microsofts-29-nokia-215-is-a-smarter-feature-phone-for-the-masses.html
Just because a cellphone would have a hard time being charged by sunlight does not mean we as a society couldn't create a device that would be truly useful to those less enfranchised.
Whatever design that is eventually developed it will need to meet a rather challenging list of constraints. The design suggestions I am putting forth below are just one way a product could be designed to meet a user's needs but I feel it would represent what individuals might desire in their smart device. My temporary title for this phone is the FreshStart, if someone in marketing wants to change it, great, I never said I was great at naming things.
The biggest limiting factor is cost, no matter how you want to slice it the primary customers of our starter phone are not the end users, but organizations that need to be able to buy hundreds, if not thousands of devices without destroying their budget. While I have no idea how much per unit either the governments of the world or non-profits would be willing to go, I am going to assume that these phones are being distributed in countries like the US and as such a maximum price of $50 is far from unreasonable. Current Nokia feature phones cost something like $30 so it shouldn't be that unreasonable to keep the dollar cost of the device close to that.
After cost comes reliability, the device needs to be physically tough and have a very high endurance. Users may not be guaranteed the opportunity to charge their phone every day and so the battery capacity should reflect the need for going several days without charging.
Close after reliability is attractiveness of the device, users need to feel like the phone they are getting is something important and worth holding onto, it may be free to them, but it should also be something that they value for more than the phone calls.
So far I am reasonably describing currently available feature phones, many now have very excellent run times, so long as they are only used for calls and texting they can work for days. Personally I enjoy the simple look of the Nokia style brick phones (this could be a result of early 2000's nostalgia.) What would be a distinguishing characteristic of the design is integrating the charger, the majority of phones require you to have a second piece of hardware to charge your phone. By integrating the charger you are reducing the number of things someone has to keep track of. The FreshStart's back would have a simple two prong A/C connector that would allow the device to be directly plugged into a wall outlet. To compliment the A/C adapter and to acknowledge the fact that individuals are mobile and may not have a long period of time near an outlet, for example the time it takes for them to finish their coffee, the FreshStart would have part of its battery capacity be a non-removable high endurance rapid charging element, either an ultra-capacitor or an optimized breed of battery that I can't think of right now. This batter would be intended to charge in under 2 minutes while providing enough energy for ten times or more run time, ideally several hours of use.
Additional features that would be nice but not required, built in USB ports to allow other devices to charge while the phone itself charges, a USB plug to allow the use of charging ports that are now showing up in cities, a flashlight, an E-Ink display.
As of now this is as far as I've gotten with the FreshStart's concept, when I get back to my desktop with CADsoftware I will try to create a 3-D render.
some follow up links, here is a case for the Iphone 5 that has the charger in built as suggested http://www.amazon.com/Prong-PocketPlug-Case-Protective-built/dp/B00F0X1JUC
and here is where I got the Nokia price point
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2865184/microsofts-29-nokia-215-is-a-smarter-feature-phone-for-the-masses.html
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