Samsung Blue Earth
As it does with most trends, Samsung is pursuing eco-friendly cell phones with vigor. It already gave us the Samsung Reclaim, and now we finally have a chance to review the Samsung Blue Earth. Forgive us if we’re a bit excited, but Samsung has been holding this handset under lock and key for several months. Indeed, the last time we saw it at CTIA in April, we could only gaze from afar while it sat in a glass case.
Like the Reclaim, the Blue Earth’s shell is made from recycled materials–specifically, plastic water bottles–but it goes a giant step further with solar panels on its rear face. You still get a standard wall charger in the box, but the panels can help you top off the phone in a pinch. It’s also free of harmful materials like polyvinyl chloride, and you can minimize battery use by adjusting the display settings. Outside of being green, the Blue Earth offers a functional feature set, but its small touch screen hampers its usability and there was static during calls. The Blue Earth GT-S7550 is an unlocked GSM world phone, though it lacks support for North American 3G networks. U.S. pricing was not announced at the time of this writing, but in the European market the Blue Earth will cost 300 euros ($447) without service. That’s a lot of cash for some green cred, so you may want to focus your eco efforts elsewhere.
Tags: Blue Earth, Samsung, Smartphone
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