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Solar powered Hi-Tech Wealth S116 goes retail
Hi-Tech Wealth's solar powered S116 that we caught sight of at CeBIT earlier this year has finally hit official retail status. While the launch date was a bit off the mark, sadly the pricing -- a hefty $510 -- and the sad fact that it is only a dual band GSM set at 900 / 1800MHz hasn't changed. For a first effort at providing power from Ra, we're definitely gonna have to waive the usual frequency criticism and hope that one of the six other handsets they release this year is in a more North American-friendly band. Oh, and yeah, this bad boy can indeed charge by the light of a candle.
Hands-on with Hi-Tech Wealth's solar powered S116
We had the opportunity to check out HTW Electronics' S116 at CeBIT, and good golly, it's real! For an estimated 400 to 500 dollars, this solar powered device can be yours as early as next month -- that is, if you live in China -- and potentially late fall in Europe. Sadly, we were told that this self-charging flip is currently only available in dual band GSM 900 / 1800 flavor, so eco-friendly users on this side of the world will have to wait. The 1.3 megapixel shooter doesn't do much for us, but hey, the standby time of... uh, forever is pretty dang nifty. A small LCD panel on the phone's face gives you info like time, battery charge status and handset volume. Leaving it out in daylight for one hour is enough for the large solar panel to juice up 30 minutes of talk time, and letting it bake for 12 hours will get you a full charge. This is the only the first solar effort by HTW, and we seriously hope to see more -- maybe with an emergency hand crank built in for those not so sunny days. Solar powered S116
