You give me a charge - adapter units for charging cells phones anywhere - Brief Article

When I was recuperating from surgery, my wife got a cell phone so I could track her down in an emergency. We're still ambivalent about the thing, but were happy to have it a few times, and it saved Pat from a lot of trouble after a late-night car breakdown.

But Pat doesn't use it enough to constantly check to see that it's charged, and has sometimes found the battery drained (and the charger at home or in the office) when she wanted to make a call. She must not be the only one, because two companies have recently announced competing products for grid-free cell-phone charging.

The FreeCharge comes from Motorola and Freeplay Energy (the folks with the wind-up radios and flashlights). The first adapter units, available this spring, will work with Motorola phones; adapters for other brands are due later in the year. They work like the Freeplay radios. About thirty seconds of cranking gives you four or five minutes of talking time. The units weigh about about a half pound and measure 5-1/2" x 2-1/2" x 2".

Advantages: renewable power, anytime, anywhere. You can keep talking as long as you're willing to crank. You get to exercise your arm muscles.

Disadvantages: something else to lug around. Cost (about $65). Keep cranking or lose your juice. They'd be really useful with satellite phones, when you're miles away from recharging power. The company says the FreeCharge would "in all likelihood" be able to charge a satellite phone, but hasn't seen enough demand yet to justify R&D costs for an adapter.

Electric Fuel Corporation's answer is the INSTANT POWER battery, good for sixteen hours of talking. Advantages: available for major phone models. About a twelfth the size of the FreeCharge. Long shelf life. Initially cheaper. Disadvantages: it's a disposable, bound eventually for the landfill.

Meanwhile, if you want to think ahead, Lawrence Livermore Lab hopes to have a fuel cell for phones available commercially in two to three years.

FreeCharge $65. Freeplay Energy Group 56/58 Conduit Street London, W1S 2YZ, UK www.freeplay.net

INSTANT POWER $15. Electric Fuel Corporation 632 Broadway, Suite 301 New York, NY 10012 212/529-9200, www.electric-fuel.com

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