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Comment by saturdaysaint | Hacker News Reader

Fantastic to hear about computing reaching the hands of the world's poorest. I wonder if poor battery life would be an issue in areas with limited access to electricity, but this could be powerful even if it reaches the more urban areas.

I love that it has a camera. I believe that omnipresent cameraphones have been an underrated deterrent for crime and government brutality in the last 10 years (in more developed countries).

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In Kenya, in areas where people don't have electricity, there are usually phone charging kiosks with large banks of car batteries.

And if you think about the amazing stuff, like the M-Pesa mobile payment system, that they were able to build up with dumbphones (M-Pesa is something like 40% of transactions there), just think what they can do with relatively open and cheap smartphones.

I get annoyed at Android manufacturers for always underpowering the batteries. It seems like extra spending on the battery would make it a better device than spending on RAM, CPU or thinness.

I hope that competition will kick in, once there's enough for RAM and CPU for everything you'd ever want, and batteries become the next differentiator.

More places are picking up electricity all the time. Oddly enough, the very solar panels and wind generators that are still seen as too expensive in e.g. the US can be a HUGE help in getting electricity to remote areas.

A typical cell phone battery stores 5-7 watt hours. With good sunlight, one 30-watt solar panel might provide full charges for 15+ phones in a day. Maybe add $10-20 to the cost of each phone to get a solar charging station set up in a village?

That wouldn't be so bad, all things considered.

Indeed, I found this true in rural South Africa. Almost everyone carried a "dumb" phone since obviously, cell access is vastly desirable over landline in those sorts of areas. Additionally, it would often behoove local groups to team up and get a small solar generator. Both for the savings (even a small panel could provide much of their daily energy use) as well as for increased self-reliance from the "grid" (or, more like the "wire", if there was one).

Solar panels are only "too expensive" in the west because:

1) the west is used to consuming a lot more electricity

2) power lines from coal plants are cheap here. There, they don't even have the plants yet.

In other words, they don't need a whole lot of juice there, and whatever other alternatives exist (if any do) are even MORE expensive.

Solar panels actually aren't a great option here believe it or not. People have been trying for a long time to get them working well and they just don't. Typical problems are theft, quick degradation from too much sun etc.. They are also pretty darn expensive.

There are other options though. One of the more interesting ones is being done by Nuru, which sets up micro-businesses of people who charge lights / phones / radios using a pedal powered generator. Those generators are really simple, last a long time and they are set up right from the start to provide an income source for the owner.

That said, smartphones aren't really viable for the 'villagers' for a while still, charging every day really isn't practical even with something like that, it is just too expensive. But there are still a ton more just above them that live in more urban environment where electricity is available, and for them cheap smartphones can really change things.

Better insolation and no need to run wires to a village make solar panels a no-brainer in a lot of places.

Some entrepreneurs are already renting access to a charger. It'd be cool to get micro-loans for them to buy solar panels.

Good idea. Maybe I should pitch that to my contacts in Kenya

Cool!

Kiva has a few Kenyan MFIs, of which two look interesting: http://www.kiva.org/partners/133 http://www.kiva.org/partners/142

I'm guessing a lot of people would lend for this kind of initiative. Please contact me if you hear back from them: chebuctonian at gmail. Thanks! :)

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