T Mobile is our rival at Fon. While we are now so far ahead of them in terms of hotspots (they have 28,000 we have 250,000), we are not there yet with this amazing machine they provide to charge any portable gadget you may have.
Follow Martin Varsavsky on Twitter: twitter.com/martinvars
No Comments
Sebastian M. Alvarez on July 18, 2008 ·
I don’t get it. You must leave your device some time in order to recharge it or is it like a superfast oven that recharge your batteries in no-time?
Mariusz Zielezny on July 19, 2008 ·
T-mobile does offer HotSpots at Starbucks, paid one. Why doesnt FON offers FREE HotSpots at DunkinDonuts ? Think about it.
Julian on July 19, 2008 ·
Pretty nice machine.
How do you actually connect the PSP to the power connector?
Luis Martins on July 19, 2008 ·
Martin,
The wireless charging technology seems to be maturing for some time but hasn’t made it to the market yet. For instance this company here: http://www.splashpower.com . They are aroung for four or five years now at least, but no mass product has emerged yet. If (a heavily stressed “if”) the technology is mature, it might well be the right time for it to take off.
I’l like to read your comments on that.
Elliott on July 19, 2008 ·
A little big to pack when u travel. No one seems to want to standardize battery chargers or even the connection to the charger. I have separate chargers for DSLR camera, digital point & shoot, camcorder, multimedia storage/player, laptop, GPS, cell phones [spouse & I get same model so there is need for only 1 charger]. That is 7. Then I need a splitter so that I can use GPS, charge cell phone & use radar detector at same time in car. Some chargers directly plug into outlet. Others for no reason come w/ 6 ft of wire. Luckily I haven’t been stopped at airport when the scanner sees all these devices & wires on X-ray machine. Then when u get to hotel u have to move the furniture to find enough outlets to plug in chargers. Then u have to remember where everything is when u need to collect all the chargers when u check out of the hotel. Maybe T-Mobile could install a unit in every hotel room!
Paul RODTS on July 19, 2008 ·
Okay, we put one in front of our house in the street… The FON battery charger… When do we get them ?
David on July 20, 2008 ·
Is that 250,000 up and running (24/7) hotspot or routers sold? There is a big difference.
Yani on July 20, 2008 ·
Hi,
I am in Korea and we have standardized cell phone chargers years ago to avoid trash and for convenience reasons. So if you get a new phone you don’t have a charger now included. The result is that you have these kind of machines from t-mobile virtually in every convenient store and in all kinds of restaurants and cafes, very convenient. You just use your friends charger at his place or someone else’s at your work. And because of the huge market having one charger type, the prices for chargers have come down drastically so that it is being used for all kinds of electronics e.g. as a charger for my wifi phone that I use (similar to vonage).
I think this is something that really has to be done on a worldwide basis…
Yani on July 20, 2008 ·
Hi,
I am in Korea and we have standardized cell phone chargers years ago to avoid trash and for convenience reasons. So if you get a new phone you don’t have a charger now included. The result is that you have these kind of charging machines from t-mobile virtually in every convenient store and in all kinds of restaurants and cafes, very convenient. You just use your friends charger at his place or someone else’s at your work. And because of the huge charger market having one charger type, the prices for chargers have come down drastically so that it is being used for all kinds of electronics e.g. as a charger for my wifi phone that I use (similar to vonage).
I think this is something that really has to be done on a worldwide basis…
Jan Karel Kleijn on July 21, 2008 ·
While this charger machine is obviously James Bondish cool, it’s a crying shame that in these days of environmental awareness every manufacturer still tries to make the extra buck or hopes to tie their customers to their brand, by each manufacturing their own kind of plug for their adapter, even for different models per brand.
That’s one reason why I use HTC phones since several years now. There not iPhones, but they do all what a phone should do and more importantly: they all come with a USB to mini USB cable for data syncing and for loading your phone’s battery!!!
That way, even if your out of juice, you simply plug your phone in your laptop or a computer in the vicinity and you can load the batteries and still continue your call.
HTC still includes a loader too in every package, which i don’t understand! They should make that optional.
If we as the consumers could convince every manufacturer of “hand”/portable devices that need regular loading, to incorporate USB to mini USB, we’d not need adapters anymore nor these complicated but cool loading devices: a bank of USB outlets ( or a USB point in your airline seat) would suffice and we’d save lot’s of energy + resources+ waste making those billions of different adapters every year + all kinds of universal 3rd party adapting packages.
Now that would be cool !!!
Leave a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Gustavo L on July 18, 2008 ·
Looked very useful. I wonder what happens if you for get your pin number?