The Reviews Are In: Hand Crank-Powered Phone
The SideWinder Cell Phone Charger from I
nnovative Solutions and Technologies’ is a sweet little hand crank-powered gizmo that you can use to charge your mobile phone anytime and anywhere - without an electrical outlet, of course.
Each two minute wind-up session is said to give you about six minutes of talk time. With a small LED light for extra illumination, it is also said to work with most cell phone models.
According to the review on CNET:
The good: The IST SideWinder is compact, light, and reusable. Its LED throws 5 minutes of light after a couple minutes of cranking.
The bad: The IST SideWinder is tough to crank; several minutes of cranking gave us only a few minutes of phone life. Also, it won’t work on a completely dead phone battery.
The bottom line: The IST SideWinder might be small, reusable, and environmentally friendly, but we never got a decent cell phone charge from the device.
Hmmm, certainly not an A+ review. But maybe it’s worth checking out for ourselves.
Nathan was thinking green at 6:11 PM on February 1, 2006
Comments are sorta kinda broken right now. We're working on it but to save energy can only work in daytime when solar system is at peak performance.
