Two new phones will be unveiled by Motorola at this year’s CES, one of which is the very first handset to be made from water bottles.
Known as the MOTO W233 Renew, it’s an environmentally conscious phone in more ways than just one. As it’s all been designed and laid out in such a way that it’s even earned itself a Carbonfund.org CarbonFree product certification.
First up is the Renew’s casing, in which it’s comprised of plastics made from recycled water bottles where there’s 20-percent less energy used in going into its making. Not only that, but it’s also 100-perecent recyclable in itself highlighting that its future has been taken into account. And just to hammer home how Green it is, Motorola has even coloured the phone’s casing green. How very subtle!
If all that wasn’t enough and why should it be with the planet being in the danger it’s in, the Renew is also supposed to be the world’s first carbon neutral mobile. How this is achieved is through a partnership with Carbonfund.org. Where Motorola has offset the carbon dioxide used in the manufacturing, distribution and operations of the phone. Moto has made investments via that very same company in both reforestation and also renewable energy resources, which aided in achieving a CarbonFree product certification.
They didn’t stop there either, as the packaging has now been said to be 22-pecent less in size over others which in turn cuts down on transportation. With all the materials used making up the box is now also printed on 100-percent recycled paper. They’ve also bundled in a postage paid recycling envelope, for sending off the existing phone the Renew has replaced solely for recycling.
Underneath all this greenness beats the heart of a GSM phone that boasts a 9 hour talk time, with 18 days of standby that comes in at 45 x 110.97 x 14.7 mm in size. There isn’t really anything outstanding about the phone apart from being very environmentally friendly, it’s more or less what you see is what you get.
MOTO Renew is expected to hit T-Mobile USA sometime in Q1 this year.
The second Mobile to be shown off in Las Vegas is the MOTOSURF A3100. This is a handset they’re calling a touch tablet, which just appears to be a wide-screen phone than the usual and that’s about it.
It’s running from Windows Mobile 6.1, with a full 2.8-inch QVGA touch screen operational from a stylus or its omni-directional trackball.
On board it’s a Quad band phone with 3G and HSDPA plus WIFI. It has all the trimmings possible for web surfing with Opera installed, playing MP3s from Windows Media Player and minor satnav with the likes of built-in aGPS.
When the A3100 arrives sometime in Q1, it will be available in Latin America and Asia.
Now, we’re not entirely sure if the Renew will ever see the light of day in the UK or main land Europe, for a couple of reasons too.
One, we weren’t contacted by Motorola over these mobiles being announced at CES. No email, no calls, no carrier pigeons – nothing whatsoever.
Two, we have been made aware that other journalists elsewhere in the world were pre-briefed under embargo on their arrival. Curiouser and Curiouser.
Both of which screams to us it’ll never be seen anywhere close to home, that along with any emails to Motorola today fell upon deaf ears surrounding the two handsets.
Let’s hope, for Al Gore’s sake the W223 isn’t the last of the Green practices surrounding a Motorola mobile phone, only just the very start.
We’d like to see all of them being produced in the very same way. In fact so much so, that we’ll look forward to the day that we’ll all be sick and tired of writing how Green a phone is, just as you will all be in reading it.
Here’s to the future and that we all have one.