Medis Technologies to Sell External "Palm Cell" for Mobile Phones

Medis Technologies announced that it has entered into a cooperation agreement with one of the largest mobile operators in the U.S., for the purposes of market testing and introduction to the market of Medis' fuel cell Power Packs as a secondary power source for portable electronic devices offered by the mobile operator. Medis Technologies said the mobile operator has a customer base of more than 50 million subscribers.

"When used to power a cell phone, each disposable Power Pack is expected to deliver the equivalent of 20 hours of talk time, or about five to six full charges of the battery, depending on the individual cell phone power consumption and battery type".

"Before its use, the Power Pack is expected to have a shelf life in excess of a year. Once it is started, the disposable Power Pack is expected to be usable for four to six weeks.The disposable Power Pack has an anticipated maximum size of 80 x 50 x 30 mm (3.2 x 2 x 1.2 inches) and anticipated weight of 150 grams when full. The disposable Power Pack is expected to have a price of $10.00 to $15.00 when offered by mobile operators to their subscribers and a suggested retail price of $19.99 when sold through traditional retail channels".

The disposable Medis "Palm Cell" product announcement reminds TreeHugger about questions that recently arose from our reporting on a "button battery"-sized micro-fuel cell discovery: revealing strong interest in whether disposable can be green. Like the Medis product described here, the button fuel cell also had a military market prospect, which no doubt creates a conficted view for some. Pragmatic TreeHuggers understand, however, that the free market can propagate a good design and help discard the others. The Army needs resource efficiency too. Letting them take the prototype step is fine if it gets into TreeHugger sights and we get to vote with our dollars.