Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

Shiro recently announced the availability of a more green MP3 player, which uses solar cells on the back to recharge its internal battery.  A pretty cool idea, but the question remains, is it practical?  Before I get into the specifics of the player, I want to mention how the solar cells work in terms of battery life.

The SQ-S Solar Media player, uses both solar cells and conventional USB to charge its internal battery, so it hasn’t fully gone solar.  It takes 6 hours to become fully charged under direct sunlight, but only 4 hours when using normal USB charging.  Now, if it were to go fully green, solar charging would have to occur a lot faster, and since the sun isn’t always shining, there has to be some back-up way to get charged. 

Moving on, it comes with a 1.8 inch screen with 128x160 resolution, integrated FM tuner, and support of formats including WMA, M4A, FLAC, WAV, OGG, and APE. No word on exact internal storage at this time.

It seems like a good idea and I expect more MP3 players to become “green” like this, however, it will be a while before big PMP manufacturers like Apple, Microsoft, SanDisk, etc make their players more energy efficient.  No word on exact pricing or availability as of yet, but expect it to be released in the Asian market first. 

Via [EverythingUSB]