Samsung's Blue Earth takes phones green

Samsung's Blue Earth handset
Samsung's Blue Earth handset

Samsung has launched a new Blue Earth handset aimed at those that like to make friends with the trees all over the world... and also give enough charge when your battery dies in the desert.

Made out of PCM, recycled plastic from water bottles, the phone is designed to intelligently know when to turn the backlight and screen brightness up and down, as well as managing extra-powered devices, like the Bluetooth radio.

Sahara charge

It also has a solar panel on the back of the pebble-shaped device (you see the link? Earth, eco, pebble?) to power the touchscreen (although we don't know how big it is as yet), and the panel can generate enough energy to make a phone call, meaning that you'll never be stuck without a charger in the Sahara.

There's also a pretty interesting / pointless (depending on your eco viewpoint) 'eco walk' function, which can track how far you've walked and tell you how much you've reduced CO2 emissions by not taking the car. It even tells you how many trees you've saved at the same, which is pretty nice to know.

Feeling turquoise

The whole thing comes in, obviously, recycled packaging as well as an energy efficient charger that uses les than 0.03W of energy in standby, so you can feel both blue and green at the same time (is that turquoise?)

This handset should debut in the second half of 2009 over here in the UK, when you can check out an interface that Samsung thinks will help us think more about the environment... so expect hot-looking polar bears and barren rainforests as backgrounds.

Gareth Beavis
Formerly Global Editor in Chief

Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grown with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.