At the World Mobile Congress that concluded in Barcelona, Spain Umeox unveiled the latest in their line of phones, a solar powered phone that costs only around $100 but looks really great. The manufacturer, a little known Chinese company called Umeox has partnered with the Dutch company, Intivation to bring out their phones. Intivation supplies the solar cells and Umeox makes the phones.

The Umeox initiative

Umeox has actually been making phones for long. They do not sell their phones under their own name but resell it to other makers who retail the phone as their products. This means that apart from the different models that Umeox has announced, there will be a few other manufacturers who will be bringing out solar powered phones in the near future.

The specifications of the Apollo as the phone is named after the Greek God of the Sun, is not that great, but at only around $100 it makes good value for money, especially if the solar recharger works as the company says it can. It has a 3 mp camera, 3.2 inch 320 X 480HVGA touch screen, 512 mb ram, a mediaTek processor, bluetooth, microSD card slot, 3G ability, wifi, 1 GB flash memory, and an audio jack.

This is however not the only model that Umoix will be bringing out. They have a total of three models, all with solar power capabilities. The Bing solar is a music phone, and the V206, is a very rugged model for those who are looking for a really durable kind of phone.

Apart from these models from Umeox there are other phones by Vodafone, ZTE and IAC, all carrying solar cell backs made by the same company, Intivation. There is also a solar charger that is in the pipeline to be brought out by XPAL.

These solar cells in the phones are enough to power the battery sufficiently so that you can extend your battery time almost indefinitely. There’s one catch though, if you allow the battery to run dry, it takes 17 hrs for it to reach full charge just using solar power. Research into typical usage characteristics of the majority of phone users however show that the phone can be recharged fully if placed in the sun face down for around 2 to 2.5 hrs a day.

Solar Phone Charger

The XPAL charger on the other hand is a charger pack that gives you the advantage of charging any phone using the sun. XPAL comes out with a number of mobile, rechargeable battery packs that can be used to recharge any device. Their latest product is their SP2000 which incorporates the Intivation solar cells to charge up the internal lithium polymer batteries.

It has a three panel, foldable solar panel that you can close and lock into place into a 7 oz package. It has a universal adapter so that you can pretty much charge any device including digital cameras, and gaming consoles.

Recently Apple too has been granted a patent for solar powered electronics showing that the trend towards using solar power for electronic devices is catching on really fast.

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