MWC: New Solar Phone For India?

The Samsung Guru may have been first to market, but it looks like the solar phone floodgates will open in 2010 with more players entering the country. One of them is Dutch company Intivation which has been fairly successful in Africa and Latin America since launching last year. Intivation itself specializes in making a step-up convertor for solar cells that allows the regular 0.5V output of a single solar cell to charge an approx 3.7V Li-Ion battery used by phones. It licenses the technology to ODMs and markets the finished products to operators. One of the new models launched at MWC 2010 by Intivation's hardware partner ZTE, is the S316. It's likely to be launched in India with an operator whose name will be announced within a month, according to CEO Paul Naastepad (see video below). The S316 has an LED torch, 180 hours of standby time, 330 mins of talk time, AM/FM radio, memory for 300 contacts/100 SMSes and a backlit keyboard. With a "way below $30" price tag, it will surely create some buzz in the rural Indian market if and when it does launch. The best part? The solar charger has been tested in the monsoons and in cloudy weather! #WIN