Solio Solar Charger uses clean energy to charge your phone, iPod

By Kelly Montgomery Published February 17, 2011

Image used with permission by copyright holder

For those who are addicted to their smartphones and iPods, but want to keep their carbon footprint on the smaller side, this pocket-sized device from Solio can definitely help. The device runs on solar energy that can be stored in its internal rechargeable battery. The Solio Solar Charger ($100) retains enough energy to charge a phone or iPod twice when the device is fully charged. All you need is some sunshine and you have an extra power source when you’re on the go. The three pieces fan out to catch sun rays when you are harvesting power. The charger comes with several adapter tips to ensure that you can charge almost any small device with your harvested solar power. It is also a carbon-neutral product made from recycled and recyclable materials. We think this would be a useful device to throw in your bag for everyday use, but it could also be helpful for outdoor activities like long hikes or camping trips.

Kelly Montgomery

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Kelly Montgomery is a magazine journalism graduate from the University of Oregon's School of Journalism and Communications…

Topics

Emerging Tech

After a week with Gemini Notebook on my Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra, I can’t imagine using it on a slab phone

Gemini Notebook has become one of the apps I use more than almost anything else. Whether I'm researching for a feature, studying for hours, or trying to make sense of a stack of PDFs, it's almost always open somewhere on my phone. Over the past years, I've used it on just about every kind of device imaginable, but one thing kept bothering me. It never really felt like a notebook.

Don't get me wrong — it worked perfectly well on a regular phone. All the features were there, and I never felt like I was missing anything. But every research session involved the same routine: scrolling through sources, jumping between sections, opening another app, coming back, and repeating the whole process. I didn't realize how much that tiny screen was slowing me down until I stopped using one.

Emerging Tech

ChatGPT Pro replaced Gemini Notebook as my favorite research app, and I didn’t see it coming

I've been using Gemini Notebook ever since it launched, and for the longest time, it was my go-to app for just about everything. Whether I was researching a topic, organizing work, or studying something new, it became one of those apps I instinctively opened without thinking. When Google kept adding new features, I genuinely believed it had secured a permanent spot in my workflow.

Then, almost without realizing it, ChatGPT Pro took over. I've been using its Work mode for a while now, and somewhere along the way, it replaced Gemini Notebook. Of course, it wasn't an overnight switch. I kept bouncing between the two for weeks, but I gradually found myself reaching for ChatGPT every single time instead. At some point, I realized I hadn't opened Gemini Notebook in days. Now, I honestly don't use it at all.

Emerging Tech

AI chatbots will happily create fake news articles, and tests show ChatGPT is the worst at it

The biggest AI chatbots are supposed to help people find information, not manufacture misinformation. But a new investigation suggests that separating those two jobs isn't as straightforward as many AI companies would like users to believe. A series of tests found that several leading AI chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, and Meta AI, could be persuaded to generate fake news stories, fabricated headlines, and even realistic-looking screenshots of well-known media outlets. While every chatbot showed some weaknesses, ChatGPT reportedly performed the worst, producing the most convincing fake content with surprisingly little effort.

The findings come from an investigation by German newsroom CORRECTIV, which tested how the AI assistants responded when asked to create false reports involving sensitive topics such as election fraud, government coups, war, vaccines, climate change, and conspiracy theories.