The iFan is the latest invention in charging smart phones without using any electricity. Despite looking a bit clunky, the iFan is a portable, small-ish (well, for a wind turbine) and very useful – especially for people who can’t pull themselves away from their phones and act uneasy when the battery in their phone is about to die.
Although right now the charger is being developed for iPhone, there’s definitely room to make a verison of this, usable to all mobile phones.
The possibilities of this new charger are endless. You could attach it to your bike, bust it out while out walking and even affix it to a part of your house. You could even spend weeks away in the middle of nowhere and not have to worry about where your next phone charge will come from. In this instance you’d probably have to worry more about phone signal.
Designer Tjeerd Veenhoven is still tinkering around with the design. He hopes to make the fan take less than 6 hours to charge a battery, as that’s how long the test model currently takes. With any luck and additional prototyping, the iFan should be on the market as soon as February.
(Spotted in the Star)
Katherine Hui is currently the Social site editor at Green Thing, a web-based public service in London that inspires people to lead greener lives through creative content.
Before this, she worked as the Development Manager at Social Innovation Camp, an organization that encourages people to use web and mobile-based technology to mobilise social change. She oversaw 300 ideas submission and helped build 20 prototypes – five of which have gone on to get further funding or investment.
Katherine’s came over to the UK form Canada in 2007 for an MSc program at the London School of Economics. Before arriving in London, she managed a small environmental start-up in Vancouver called the Canadian Climate Change Alliance.
Katherine is football mad. She is a loyal supporter of Arsenal FC, plays for Islington Borough Ladies FC and coaches for Gunners in Islington in her spare time. Her second favourite hobby is kite surfing and she can sometimes be found chasing the wind.
