iFan Charges Your iPhone with Wind Power!

[Maura]

The Toronto Star reports today on an iFan that has been dreamed up and then created by Dutch designer Tjeerd Veenhoven, as a means of charging the iPhone using pure wind power. The iFan is made from a soft rubber skin, and uses fan blades to harness the power of the wind to charge the battery.

“The thing with wind is that it is often only profitable when you scale it up to large windmills. Therefore, wind energy is a concept that is far away from us,” Veenhoven told The Star. “One of the nice things about the iFan is that it communicates the quality of wind in a very direct and personal way.”

Yes, very nice, but does it actually work?! Well according to Veenhoven, it does, although he says it takes about six hours to charge his iPhone. He doesn’t say whether or not that’s standing in a full gale, for example, or how hard the wind has to be blowing to charge the iPhone.

The iFan is still in its prototype stage, but Veerhoven says that he will have a working prototype read to go by February 2011, and if all goes according to plan, he hopes to be able to eventually get his iFan on the market. I'm still not sure it's not a hoax, but we shall see!

Source: How to use the wind to charge your iPhone - thestar.com

 

[Adam2k90]

Bit to big but nice idea. If they could incorporate around the whole phone and make it smaller it would be great!

 

[Kaemon]

wow, how fast would it charge on a very windy day?!? /sarcasm
too impractical...