Comments on: Solar Surge iPod and iPhone Cases Are Now Available!

By: onlyarose

onlyarose — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 19:56:50 +0000

Solar power chargers are great if you live in a sunny location! Great for hikers, emergency power/back up and eco warriors living in the city or the desert…

maybe not for every day charging.

By: nagol21

nagol21 — Wed, 05 May 2010 22:44:27 +0000

I would gt one but they dont make one for an ipod nano witch they defiantly should

By: Clare Evans

Clare Evans — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:07:21 +0000

I agree with @metis: by the time they’ve produced all the cases, there wonrt be much energy saved

By: metis

metis — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:19:54 +0000

lets be honest, this is greenwash and apple fanboy reporting.

to fully charge a phone at optimum panel output you need over 13 hours of direct sun. then to charge the integrated backup battery, you need *another* 13 hours. in the middle of summer you can probably get half of a charge if you leave the phone sitting on the beach towel next to you all day.

you’re going to see massive extension of phone life, but not much more than if you strap on an entire second battery in the first place.

yes, solar harvesting is good, but the amount of energy you’re saving is very probably offset by the manufacturing costs and environmental harm for another battery a chunk of plastic and a solar panel for something that’ll probably live in your pocket or indoors.

i’ll stick to hardware with replaceable batteries and a USB solar charger for my phone and any other devices i want to charge off grid.