I've got the power

Better batteries with higher charge densities are helping, but alternatives are also being examined. At Nokia’s recent ‘The Way we Live Next” presentation, three alternatives were presented; solar energy, fuel cells and energy harvesting.

Solar energy has been surprisingly absent until now, following Nokia’s initial experiments with the solar cell-equipped battery option for the 1611 a decade ago.

Some third parties do now sell solar chargers, where you put a small box containing rechargeable batteries and a solar panel out in the sunshine during the day, and then use it to charge your phone overnight. But these are relatively inefficient (as you lose power transferring it from one rechargeable cell to another), but convenient as you don’t have to leave your phone in a bright location.

Fuel cells have received lots of publicity for their ability to use substances such as alcohols (methanol, ethanol) to generate power. While these are reasonably efficient and fairly clean running (the waste product is typically water), there can be problems with the availability of fuel and potential regulatory issues in carrying flammable liquids on public transport.

The third type, energy harvesting, includes windmills, human power (such as hand cranked generators) or literally harvesting available energy without making a special effort – like body heat, or normal movements captured by a generator in your shoe heel.

In Australia, researchers at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation are looking at harvesting power via a throwback to the static-generating nylon shirts of the 1970s. Using funding from the Defence Department, energy generating shirts have been developed which contain a piezoelectric material that produces power when deformed. As the wearer moves, the fabric bends and so the built-in flexible batteries charge up. The original idea was to reduce soldiers’ dependence upon batteries for modern warfare’s raft of technology.

Unfortunately, the current versions don’t stand up to washing, so not only will you end up wearing something very unfashionable, but you won’t be the most fragrant person in the room either.

Happy birthday to an Ikon

Psion Teklogix is celebrating its 40th birthday. That’s actually a slight exaggeration: only the Teklogix part is 40 years old – Psion was founded 1980, so is a bit of a whippersnapper at just 27.

Nevertheless, this is a company which has had a great effect on mobile computing. From the original Psion Organiser, a 1980s yuppie status symbol, through the Series 3 and 5 whose EPOC operating system was the foundation of Symbian, the company has made some truly iconic products.

Now Psion Teklogix’s latest rugged PDA, Ikon, has been launched, but there are some disappointments in store for Psion aficionados. While the Ikon does come with a choice of operating systems, they are all variants of Windows Mobile rather than Symbian. The Ikon does have some nice tricks up its sleeve, such as an integrated barcode scanner, Wi-Fi, 3G, Bluetooth and GPS, but in a fairly dull traditional phone format it looks just like any other Windows smartphone. It’ll still sell well to businesses that need employees to carry out on-the-move data collection, but it won’t have the wide appeal the old PDAs enjoyed.

Say goodbye to office phone fun

Never one to miss out on a snappy product title, Microsoft has released Microsoft System Centre Mobile Device Manager 2008 (MSCMDM08).

This is designed to appeal to the beleaguered IT departments of large businesses who want control of employee devices for support, security and prevention of abuse.

There are some general management and usability features, such as allowing applications and updates to be pushed out over the air to handsets much like IT departments can do with Windows Software Update services for PCs, plus VPN access to the corporate network.

Apparently, locking down Windows Mobile devices will make them “first class citizens” in the corporate IT infrastructure. What this actually means is security can be enforced and the devices locked down to only allow approved software to run. Individual features of the handset can also be limited, such as Bluetooth, SMS, or the camera.

From a business point of view this is quite desirable; locking down means there is a defined, tested suite of applications installed with no instability introduced due to the users putting on non-business related tools. Further security comes from being able to encrypt all of the data on the device, and also remotely wipe the contents if it is lost or stolen.

It is less appealing for the employees, of course, who are currently used to a phone being a personal item they can use as they see fit, but who’ll find that, after MSCMDM is installed, the fun’s over.

The Greenphone is no more

The first handset to feature user-modifiable firmware, the Linux-based Trolltech Greenphone, has been discontinued.

Trolltech is best known for its QT and Qtopia user interface development tools for desktop and mobile devices. The Greenphone was intended to kick-start interest in phones as development platforms – giving the user almost complete control of the software could enable some innovative applications to be developed, as normally this is restricted by limitations in phone operating systems.

The Greenphone did enable Trolltech to build up a set of applications called the Greensuite, a fairly complete set of software apps which can be taken by a handset manufacturer to build up a low cost (at least from a licensing point of view) smartphone.

But it’s not the end of open Linux handsets; Trolltech is now actively supporting the FIC/OpenMoko Neo1973, which has more up-to-date specs, and will be announcing further supported devices over the next few weeks.