Nokia DC-14 bike charger
Pedal power
Review Most of us are happy to be green so long as it doesn’t put us too far out of our way. With this in mind, Nokia has released a gizmo for turning your pedal power into battery power with a bike charger for its phones.
Charging bars with a difference: Nokia's DC-14
You might think that Nokia’s take on green power for its mobiles would be state of the art piece of digital wizardry. But no, the DC-14 bike charger looks very similar to those old bike light chargers you may have seen aged geography teachers pedalling around with a couple of decades ago.
It’s a clumpy contraption consisting of a dynamo, which you attach to your bike’s front fork with a bracket, which is in turn attached to a grooved wheel which rests against your bike tyre. When you set it up, the charger’s wheel should sit a few millimetres away from your bike’s front tyre. Pressing a button moves it inwards to make contact with the tyre.
At £25 it’s probably a bit too much hassle to steal, but any cyclist who’s had their bike lights and reflectors unscrewed and taken will be wary of leaving the device on their bike in public view – and there’s no quick-release system.
Familiar dynamo arrangement
A pair of wires connect to a standard Nokia 2mm pin plug which you insert into your phone’s power port. Since it’s only available with Nokia’s proprietary power plug you can only use it with Nokia phones.
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COMMENTS
The '70s called....
....they'd like their "technology" back, please.
GJC
Not designed for western markets
It's for developing countries where there might not be a reliable electricity charge but they are more likely to have a bike. (It's a lot cheaper in those markets)
They just sold it here as a pander to greenies.
re: destroyed the sidewall
If it was dragging and wearing then you didn't set it up correctly. or the dynamo bearings were knackered.
Better green solution...
Don't buy a new phone until your old one is unusable. Wasting money on the new, annual release of the next iToy fashion accessory is bad for the environment. And no, you aren't going to watch the latest blockbuster on an iPhone. You are just wasting the environment to show off. Given how much we know about the environmental effects of conspicuous consumption, that sits at the pathetic end of the spectrum of human behaviour.
The tech industry is one of the worst offenders for built-in obsolesence, landfill and waste. Tech owners and early adopters are some of the most arrogant when it comes to not giving a stuff about the environment that their kids will inherit.
Probably good for the economy that the concept of shame has passed out of currency, given the sheer laziness and ignorance of those who continue to unthinkingly pollute at the drop of a hat, and the complete dependency upon consumer addiction of our flawed and unsustainable economic system
It will end badly, but you needn't worry, eh. It's your kids and grandchildren that will suffer the most, not you.
Not all about the money
I'm not sure why you'd assume this would just be about the money. It seems to be most useful as a way of ensuring your phone can be used as a GPS nav unit for more than a couple of hours whilst out cycling (using ovi maps of course). Given it's use of a rim dynamo, I can't see it appealing to anybody other than leisure cyclists, but that seems to be a legitimate market. More serious outdoors types would probably have a dedicated weatherproof GPS unit anyway. I'd have thought the largest problem for this use would be the rubber straps to hold the phone in place though, since they go right across the screen.
