Do you need a charger?

Nokia Announces Bike-Powered Phone-Charger

As gadget chargers go, this one is pretty low-tech. But as it is made by Nokia, and aimed at developing countries, it is also likely that it will last forever.

The bike charger relies on the well tested and durable bottle-dynamo to convert your pedaling into power, and the phone is held to the handlebars with a big rubber-band. In between is a box of circuitry to give a nice smooth current to any device equipped with a 2mm jack.

The charger will first be available in Kenya for around €15 ($18) and will go on sale worldwide by the end of this year. So how much power can our legs produce? Quite a lot, surprisingly: Pedal at 6mph for just 10 minutes and you’ll get almost half an hour of talk time or a stunning 37 hours of standby. The minimum speed required to charge a phone is 4mph, or walking speed, so even a modestly jaunty commute should be enough to keep your cell going for a whole day.

I like the simplicity of Nokia’s gadget. Other solutions tend towards the complicated, with magnets or hub dynamos providing the juice. With bikes, though, simple is almost always best.