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Samsung E200 Eco

 Samsung E200 Eco Discontinued
29th August 2008

Samsung's answer to the Nokia 3110 Evolve is the Samsung E200 Eco, an unremarkable candy bar phone except for the fact that it is made of bioplastics.

The aim here is to reduce the CO2 emissions created in the handset manufacturing process. Samsung say that creating a ton of bioplastics generates 2.16 tons less CO2 than traditional methods.. although they didn't say how much CO2 is normally produced so it is hard to tell if this is an impressive saving or not.

So exactly how much bioplastic is in the E200 Eco? Without taking one apart it is hard to say, but it is probably something in the region of 25 grams of plastic. Let's be generous and say that the E200 Eco saves 60 grams of CO2.. is that a lot? Well, not really.. that's about a 382 metre journey in a Ford Focus (about a quarter of a mile). Of course, before that you have to build the phone and ship it across the ocean to the other side of the world - so that carbon footprint is going to be quite substantial (The Ethicurean compares the energy footprint of shipping rice as an example).

 Samsung E200 Eco Don't forget that bioplastics come from plants harvested on land that would have been previously used for food production, and with a worldwide shortage of food you have to ask yourself "is this the best way that I can help to save the world?"

More usefully, the Samsung E200 Eco has an alarm to tell you when the battery is full, so you can stop wasting energy. The box it comes in is made from unvarnished recycled paper, so that has a lower environmental footprint too.

Enough about bioplastics and carbon dioxide. What's in the phone? Well, it's a pretty unexciting device with a 176 x 220 pixel display, a 1.3 megapixel camera, microSD expandable memory, a multimedia player and FM radio. It weighs about 95 grams, and the original non-Eco E200 has a street price of about €170, so expect the Eco version to be a little bit more expensive.

Although the Samsung E200 Eco does at least make an effort, our advice is to forget it. It is trivially easy to save more CO2 than the bioplastics in this phone ever will. But, if you really do want the E200 Eco, then Samsung say that it should be available from September onwards in Europe.

Our advice? Buy a better phone. Keep it for longer. And then when you are done with it, recycle it so that someone else can use it.

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Samsung E200 Eco at a glance

Available:

September 2008

Network:

GSM 900 / 1800 / 1900

Data:

GPRS + EDGE

Screen:

176 x 220 pixels, 262k colours

Camera:

1.3 megapixels

Size:

Medium monoblock
108 x 45 x 10mm / 95 grams

Bluetooth:

Yes

Memory card:

microSD

Infra-red:

No

Polyphonic:

Yes

Java:

Yes

GPS:

No

Battery life:

3.5 hours talk / 10 days standby

 

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