Since we announced the Solar Coral 200 mobile phone in February together with ZTE and Digicel, a lot has happened in the world of portable solar powered devices. Samsung made a big splash with their bold idea for the Blue Earth, and now with the launch of the SC200 in Digicel's market rapidly approaching interesting developments are taking place as others, too, are announcing solar powered handsets.

Most notably, Sharp recently announced its foray into solar handsets, and showed their very flash first model, to be introduced by KDDI as SH002.

Here's a video:

The device will charge enough for 2 minutes call time in 30 minute of exposure to bright sunlight.

Last week, Samsung announced the introduction of the Guru E1107, a low-end handset that will find its way into the Indian market soon, at a price of Rs2,799 (about US$60), and it will get a 5-10 min talk time on a 60 min charge. [source]

Performance comparison

As we have put our efforts behind opening up a new market segment of portable solar powered devices, it's heartening to see others join this effort, an affirmation of our ideas of what the world will need the coming years.

Though truth be told, while no devices have been tested by us, it seems that the performance listed by these two devices pales in comparison with the charge realized by handsets developed by our current partners, Commtiva and ZTE.

If we compare* the charge time/talk time as mentioned in the press coverage with that of the ZTE handset that uses our proprietary technology, an interesting picture forms:

And that does not even account for the differences in performance that will occur from the difficulties of serially-connected solar cells, which are all successfully circumvented by using a single solar cell with Intivation's patented technology.

Right now we stand at the beginning of a new segment in portable consumer electronics devices that will no longer rely on the grid for their power, but in stead will get electricity from free and ubiquitous sunlight.

We hope to make a difference by enabling the production of low-cost solar powered devices that have amazing performance, and so naturally we hope that our colleagues at Sharp and Samsung will consider adopting our technology in order to make solar powered devices that give the user and even better experience.

In the mean time, we're working with various partners on some exciting new products, so expect to see some new solar powered products soon!

* The data used for this comparison was not derived from our own testing but retrieved from the video and website mentioned in the article. If you feel this comparison does not represent true facts please contact us here.