Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Wind-Up Battery Charger Gives New Life to Phones

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2003 10:59:21 -0400

Wind-Up Battery Charger Gives New Life to Phones

With all the power loss in the United States lately, who wouldn't need a wind-up
phone charger! The Fuso Rikaseihin Co. Ltd's GoGoPower wind-up wireless phone
charger allows a user to charge their phones.  Winding the handle for five minutes
gives phones about 20 minutes of power. Not meant to replace a regular charger,
the wind-up GoGoPower is great for emergencies. The wind-up power generator runs
for $42 and comes with a built in flashlight. It can be used with Motorola, Sony,
Nokia, NTT DoCoMo and Ericsson phones. Japan's Fuso expects to sell the product in
Asia and in camping stores in Europe and the United States.

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No Electricity? Use a Wind-Up Phone Charger
Tue Sep 23, 5:03 AM ET

BANGKOK (Reuters) - This must have happened to you: it's the end of the
day, you need to make an urgent call, your mobile phone's battery is down,
and you are nowhere near an electricity socket.

With the "GoGoPower," a wind-up mobile phone charger, you could make that call.
Five minutes of winding the handle will give a mobile phone 20 minutes of power.
"It is not meant to replace the regular
charger, but it is great for emergencies,"
said Nobumasa Neishi, marketing manager
at Japan's Fuso Rikaseihin Co. Ltd, which makes
the charger.

Priced at $42, the hand-heldgenerator is quite noisy and not cheap, although it
comes with a built-in flashlight. It can be used with phones from Nokia (news -
web sites), Motorola, Sony Ericsson (news - web sites) and NTT Docomo.
Neishi said Fuso Rikaseihin expects to sell 30,000 chargers in Japan this year and
100,000 in 2004. At a trade fair in Bangkok, the charger was launched for markets
in Southeast Asia and China, where power is not always available.
But it also plans to sell the product to camping equipment shops and as an
emergency backup in European and U.S. markets.
In the United States, worries about terrorism, natural disasters and electricity
black-outs have boosted sales of muscle-powered generators for products such as
flashlights, radios and phones.

Last week, hurricane Isabel knocked the power out in six million homes and
businesses along the U.S. East Coast.
Fuso Rikaseihin is not the first on the market. Last year, Freeplay, the British
company which invented the wind-up radio, and U.S. phone producer Motorola
launched the "Freecharge," a charger for Motorola and Nokia phones.
Adaptors for other brands are in development, Freeplay said on its Web Site.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=569&ncid=738&e=3&u=/nm/20030923/tc_nm/tech_phones_charger_dc

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