Nokia add Energy Saving Alerts
by Matthew Sparkes, London, UK on 05.11.07
Nokia have released a new feature to alert users to unplug their phone from the charger once the battery is full. Nokia claim that it could save enough power to supply 85,000 homes, as phone chargers waste power when they remain plugged in.
The feature is being introduced with the Nokia 1200, 1208 and 1650, but the company plan to make it universal across the whole product range. This is a wonderful example of how technology needs to adapt to save power. It's not a simple case of making devices more efficient, but technology needs to alter behaviour. By providing gentle reminders and hints, technology can provide encouragement and steer people towards greener behaviour. If a device is sitting there, plugged in, wasting power, then it should alert it's owner. If a device sits inactive for a certain period of time, then it should shut itself down. :: Nokia See also :: Please unplug your phone charger now
Why not just put a kill switch or smart sensor into the wart?
It's an interesting idea, but surely the solution is much simpler? When the phone is charged, the wall unit turns itself off. This requires no user interaction and also saves power from constantly being 'on charge'. When the phone reaches a prset level (80% of full charge?), the charger turns itsefl on again and recharges the battery.
Of course, this means some more complicated electronics from Nokia, but has the added effect that ever user will save energy, not just the ones who respond to the 'I'm fully charged' alarm.
Al
Why not make a smart charger instead? Because a full charge alarm is a quick software change to an existing product but a smart charger takes a real engineering effort.
If they're serious about saving energy, they should be working on the smart charger already and using this alarm as a stop gap.
Great news from Nokia as usual :) Their user for 10 years :)
Large corporations would much rather bitch at people than spend money to prevent the problem that annoys them.
When I worked retail, corporate would regularly send out reports about which employees were using the wrong button to correct mispriced items. As managers, we were expected to "coach" them, in order to stop the behavior. A sane person would ask, "why don't they just fix the button?" Answer: "It would cost more to reprogram the software." Nokia: right idea- wrong solution.
Hmmmm, old news This feature is as least as old is my Nokia N90! (i got it in 2006/02)