Bicycle charger for phones by Nokia

It's time you cycle not only to be healthy, but also to get your mobile phone charged. The bicycle charger for mobile phones by Nokia would hit the Indian market by March this year. The gadget priced close to `1,500 INR would generate power enough for 28 minutes of talk-time for every 10 minutes cycled. While the manufacturers are looking at young urban Indians as customers, we will have to wait and see if the gadget become pop ular among them?
because bicycle is still used more for exercise by urban Indians than the mode of transport.


Views of the people and newspapers:Media professional Ritika Kashyap likes the idea, but thinks that the present generation may not fall for it. "We are too busy these days. Who will want to charge a phone by cycling when you can easily do it with a regular electric charger? And then there are very few people who like cycling," she says. 


Rajat Bose, a project manager in IBM, thinks that it is a great idea. "It may not work with the urban youth, but it will surely work in rural areas where there are lots of power cuts," he says, adding that they should bring the price down.

"And even if it doesn't work, I'd like buying the gadget for myself. It will be a good addition to my gadget collection," says Rajat.

So is it mainly the collectors item.... will it sell in the mass market?

Thoughts around it:

Tech expert Ankit Fadia says that it will not work for the urban market. Ya, it seems so as in the urban market, cycling is more of a fun activity. It is a rare sight to see an upmarket urban Indian cycling to office but it can be a hit with urban Indians who are in the SEC C category. They are the ones who cycle to office and they have time to charge the phone during the way. And also they cycle from their homes which is sometimes in the village or from slums where the power supply is not regular, it might pick up there... but again the chances also are 50 - 50 . 

Yet if we look at rural market I was wondering can this same charger be fixed to a bullock cart or a camel cart and then probably it can pick up smartly and also appeal to a large scale of villagers who travel between cities to transport their vegetables and other goods.

But the common thought which i caught from the reports in various newspapers is that:
"It is meant for rural areas. And as far as the price is concerned, I'm looking at its advantages, the government will come up with schemes to make it available for rural people," 

Yet, fitness freak think it's a good concept. "As cycling is a routine in my life and I prefer it over gymming, this charger will definitely work for me. If more people use it, it will also help in power conservation," he says and adds that the gov ernment can take steps to market the product well.

But not everybody is upbeat about the gadget. Mobile Switching Centre (MSS) engineer, Vikash Singh, thinks that the technology involved in the gadget is not very reliable. "It must have been tried and tested by the company, but the real success depends after the public starts using it and it gets popular. It's expensive and until now, we are not very sure about its shelf life," he says.

Information and analysis of the charger:

"However, tech expert Ashish Bhatia, says that hand crank chargers and pedal dynamo chargers for cellphones are not really new. "They have been around for several years for outdoor sporting and recreational use in Global Positioning Systems (GPS), personal digital assistants (PDAs), cycle computers and low powered devices. 

But this is the first time that someone has thought of putting them to good use in a country like India where the electrical power is a meagre resource in some parts of the country," he says and adds that apart from being environmentally friendly, they make a lot of sense in villages with erratic power supply."
"Since they tap kinetic energy (mechanical energy that a body has by virtue of its motion), they can be used virtually anytime -and unlike solar chargers even when there is no sunlight,"