Sure, gadgets never stop improving, but Samsung just upped the bar if their new Blue Earth touch phone proves it can handle real-life applications. The phone features a solar panel that provides 10 minutes of talk time per hour of direct sunlight charge. With a Palm Pilot/iPhone-look, the Blue Earth phone is sleek and attractive. One blog ranked the solar product’s color schemes as the best they had ever seen.  Eco-hip, here we come.

Because of the heavy power draw of touch screens (backlighting and the like), Samsung came up with “Eco Mode,” which allows the user to set the phone to low-power options, such as the screen dimmer and Blue Tooth to save energy. The wall charger for the phone has a standby mode which draws around 0.03W while waiting to charge.  Samsung says the Blue Earth comes with a user interface designed “to draw attention to preserving our fragile environment,” and that the shape of the phone is a “rounded pebble.” For those who really need confirmation that they are helping the world, the phone features an “Eco Walk” pedometer mode that shows how many trees you’ve saved by walking rather than driving. From the graphics I have come across, it looks like the trees grow one by one and form a line (just to let you in on the cuteness).

The phone is set to arrive sometime this fall, but a true release date is not readily available.  The phone made its debut at the Mobile World Congress earlier in 2009.  Samsung hopes to become a green leader in the cellular field with this phone – even the packaging is minimal and recycled.

Plastics used in the phone are also eco-friendly, as they’ve been salvaged from recycled drinking water bottles and made without brominated flame retardants, beryllium or phthalate. That even includes the Energy Star-rated charger.

About The Blue Earth Dream (from the Samsung Press Release)

“The Blue Earth Dream conveys hope and sets goals for sustainable growth and life. In increasing environmental awareness, Samsung is developing ways to reduce CO2 emissions and to save energy at every stage of the product life cycle, as an effective response to climate change. Milestones have been put in place to eliminate hazardous substances from handsets and packaging will be designed from recycled materials. Samsung will encourage its customers to recycle handsets at a growing number of special take-back points worldwide.”

Eco-hip or not, trendy or not, the ability of a cell phone to self-charge will be an asset to anyone who travels a lot, goes camping, or is plain forgetful of charging (I’m guilty of all three).  G0ne are the days of ignoring phone calls because of supposed dead batteries. Your only excuse now will be that the sun wouldn’t shine and you couldn’t find your wall charger.  Maybe this will make for a more polite world… or maybe not, but thanks for the foresight, Samsung.

Check out the Cnet video folks trying out this new product.

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Posted on October 16th in Solar Products by Craig.