May 13th, 2007
Unplug My Charger Already! I’m Full!
By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
In terms of wasted energy, among the most wasteful of things are the bricks we leave plugged into sockets just sitting there … touch them, and many will be warm, so you know they are sucking power. Despite the fact that, indeed, they are using miniscule amounts of power, when you add up all the miniscule amounts around the world, it becomes quite a large amount. Despite the fact it’s undeniably a PR move as well as anything else, Nokia phones, starting with the 1200, 1208 and the 1650, will start to alert people to not just unplug the phone, but the charger as well.
“Around two-thirds of the energy used by a mobile phone is lost when it is unplugged after charging but the charger itself is left in a live socket. We want to reduce this waste and are working on reducing to an absolute minimum the amount of energy our chargers use. The new alerts also play an important role, encouraging people to help us in this goal by unplugging their chargers.” Source: Nokia
We Say: Note that these alerts will be to unplug the charger, not just the phone. It doesn’t say what kinds of alert they will be … audible and visual or just visual? Doesn’t really matter how much power is taken up by the alert since it’s fully charged, right? And you want it to be somewhat annoying to make sure it gets done. 
Puzzled says:
Of course, let’s annoy the users and make them go under the table to unplug the charger, instead, god forbid, building a logic into the charger that automatically shuts off the circuitry when the phone is unplugged.
May 14th, 2007 at 6:33 am
Frank says:
Have you touched and felt the heat from your cable box lately? Even if you’re cable box is “off” it’s still warm to the touch.
May 14th, 2007 at 7:48 am
Tommy Thomas says:
Have we ever thought of how insignificant this is in the grand scheme of things.
June 11th, 2007 at 1:10 am