Your car’s broken down. Your phone’s out of battery. Hell, it’s always out of battery these days. What do you do? Well, if Xpal Power has anything to do with it you’ll just pick up your Spare One.
Designed specifically for emergency situations, this super-cheap phone runs from a single AA battery reports Engadget from CES. Xpal claims that the standby time with a single battery is a staggering 15 years. Fifteen years! That’s over half my lifetime to date.
(I’m not entirely sure how they can guarantee that claim, for what it’s worth — they certainty didn’t test it in real time.)
Even better, it’s dual-band and is designed to transmit its location alongside its call ID. Each phone comes with a microSIM (and a battery! woop!) and costs $US49.99. That’s pretty cheap for peace of mind. [Engadget]
Esophagus
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 10:09 AMWouldn’t the battery expire in that time? New batteries I’m selling now expire in 2016…
ba!
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 10:48 AMI’ll just use my flare-gun app.. that will exist in 15 years time.
Viddy
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 11:28 AMImagine your partner having to swap the SIM out of her dead iphone into this one… it ain’t gonna happen.
Or, you pay 15 years worth of phone plan to maybe use it once.
The change of you breaking down, and breaking down in the middle of completely nowhere, having a completely dead phone and traveling into completely nowhere without a phone charger in your car is pretty slim.
Osiris Fox
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 2:18 PMNever mind about the signal required to make said phone call for said desolated area…
Viddy
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 11:28 AM*The chance
Sam
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 11:52 AMSounds like a great idea in a lot of ways, but while the standby life on it is phenomenal, the big problem is Australia is credit expiry. Not much point in keeping a phone in your glove box “just in case” if you have to recharge your prepaid account every 3 months…
TSH
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 12:15 PMapart from emergency numbers not requiring credit (AFAIK), every prepaid service allows you to add credit over the phone…
Sam
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 12:22 PMYes, but credit-less accounts get closed after a period of time if not topped up.
Having emergency calls is great and all, but in my case I’d be more interested in having one of these as a back up phone to use on Telstra’s (much better) Tasmanian network with I’m out of Vodafone coverage.
tag86
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 12:05 PMDon’t forget most phones allow you to make emergency calls without credit. I think some don’t even require a sim card in the phone (correct me if I’m wrong)
TSH
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 12:14 PMuSIM? Considering the target market, why not regular SIM? It’s not like they don’t have room in that enclosure…
Ren
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 12:38 PMYou can run most international emergency numbers without having a working sim on any phone…
however my question is, in the event of a catastrophe and all the communication infrastructure goes down in a blaze of glory… how are these phones gonna work then?
Sicarius123
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 2:14 PM15 years standby on an AA? 5-10 year old AA’s generally leak.