Green Phone

Do consumers care about green cell phones yet? The jury isstill out, with little info available other than launch pressreleases, but that isn’t stopping phone makers and carriers fromlaunching new “green” cell phone brands and services. The latestcomes from Samsung and Sprint, which this morning announced thatSamsung’s “Reclaim” phone will be available to Sprint customersstarting next week.

 

Reclaim is made with 80 percent recycled materials, with 40percent of the outer casing produced with bioplastics from corn(fyi guys, corn isn’t sustainable) and lacking most of the toxicchemicals usually found in mobile phones. In addition, it’s got anenergy-efficient charger. So for about $50 and a 2-year Sprintcontract, you can buy one at Sprint stores, as well as Best Buy —if you want one.

 

One of the interesting things about the Reclaim is that it hassome decent features and functionalities, like high-speed 3Gnetwork access, a slider QWERTY keyboard, GPS and accompanyinglocation-based services, and a one-click button for mobile webaccess to sites like Facebook, *******, MySpace and YouTube. Thedecent features make it more like the feature-rich high-end greenphone from Samsung called the Blue Earth, which has a solar panelon the back, a pedometer and software to track the carbon emissionsyou’ve saved by walking. In contrast, some phone makers like SonyEricsson and Nokia have taken the opposite approach and createdgreen phones with bare-bones features.

 

Given that the phone makers are still experimenting with thegreen phone market, they’ll be learning soon enough if theeco-conscious consumer also wants a lot of rich features and iswilling to pay higher prices. Different geographies will likelyunfold differently (U.S, Europe, China, Japan, etc.)。