XPAL launches amazing mobile phone with 15 year battery life!

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Friday, 20 January 2012 22:32

Your IT - Home IT

XPAL, the company behind the popular 'Powerskin' line of smartphone battery-and-case in one, as well as Energizer's popular Energi to Go range, has announced an innovative 'spare' mobile phone with a truly astounding battery life of up to 15 whopping years - while powered by a single AA battery.

A mobile phone with 15 years of battery life for only US $49.99?

Sounds amazing, doesn't it? Of course, the phone itself won't run for 15 years with constant use, but it's a phone that, once you put an AA Energizer Lithium battery within, will maintain its charge for an incredible 15 years, making it the perfect emergency phone for any situation.

The phone in question is called the 'SpareOne', and it's from the Chinese battery powerhouse XPAL, a company with such good technology that traditional battery company Energizer rebrands some of XPAL's products with its own Energizer brand and 'Energi to Go' label.

Showcased at the very recent 2012 CES in Las Vegas, the SpareOne phone can be seen at the 'SpareOnePhone.com' website. Although it looks like it has a screen, that's actually the place where the single AA battery is stored and proudly displayed, with the phone relying on you to remember what buttons you just pressed - like billions of phones worked before screens on phones became common.

Naturally, you can pre-program numbers into the SpareOne, or just dial numbers as per usual and talk to whoever you want, with 10 hours of talk time using the Energizer Lithium battery, and obviously fewer hours of talking (or fewer -years- of emergency battery life) if you use AA batteries with Alkaline or NiHM battery chemistries.

Alan Cymberknoh, the SpareOne Project Director at XPAL Power said that 'SpareOne's breakthrough technology provides an unprecedented lifeline during dire situations that require an emergency response. By operating on a single AA battery, SpareOne solves so many daily issues, serving as a simple back-up phone you can carry without worrying whether it's charged or not.

'It can be left in a car for emergencies, used by hotels who want to pre-program concierge numbers for guests, passed to your children or parents to maintain an open line of communication - it's essentially designed to make and receive the most important calls, no matter what. SpareOne has limitless potential and we're excited to first announce it at CES 2012', the intriguingly named Mr Cymberknoh concluded.

Knowing that XPAL's distributor in Australia is Mr Mobile, I gave them a call to ask about it, and they were most definitely aware of its launch at CES 2012, and its impending launch sometime in the first three months of this year in North America.

The good people at Mr Mobile naturally expressed their desire to bring the SpareOne to Australia, and mindful of Australia's telecommunications laws, were careful to note that the SpareOne would need to go through Australia's appropriate phone carrier and communications authority tests before they could be locally sold to Australian customers.

Mr Mobile's site is definitely worth checking out if you haven't been there yet - from a sweet range of stuff you'll find a stack of accessories available for various big selling smartphones, rechargeable battery packs for phones, iPads and even laptop/notebook PCs and Macs, an incredible Bluetooth system for motorbike riders wanting the ultimate in helmet based comms, a very cool stylus for capacitive screens that 'plugs' into your device's 3.5mm headphone socket, and even solar chargeable battery packs you can clip to your backpack or elsewhere so you always have a spare battery charged and ready to recharge your digital devices.

Now, if you're wondering exactly what kind of mobile cell phone we're talking about, the answer is that it's a 'dual band GSM phone', which makes me wonder: will there still be GSM networks on Planet Earth in 15 years time?

Presumably there will still be GSM networks, even though we'll presumably be at 5G, 6G or even faster mobile technologies by then, otherwise your 15 year emergency phone might not work in 15 years time when you need it.

However, 15 years is a long time away, and should the world have completely ditched GSM by then, I'm sure the good people at XPAL will have released a SpareTwo, SpareThree or future SparePhone model by that time.

And for those not on GSM or elsewhere, XPAL says that 'Different versions - for the Unites States, Europe and Asia - will be available with WCDMA frequency options for selected regions.'

More details on page two, please read on!