Water and mobile devices really do mix!

[Bob Russell]

The news today brings a couple of interesting items that bring together two items that don't normally go together - mobile devices and water...

• Water Powered Mobile Phones [cellular-news.com] Two Japanese companies, DoCoMo and Aquafairy, are getting together to make a "water based micro fuel cell" that they hope to sell for use in mobile phones. The basic idea is that the recharger will turn water into the hydrogen that powers the fuel cell. Specifically, "The fuel cell is the smallest in the world with power output of 2 watts. The recharger combines DoCoMo's recharger technology with Aquafairy's thin film power unit technology and catalyst for producing hydrogen from water."
  
  
• A waterproof Palm-powered PDA [teleread.org] Generally, if you're going to get a ruggedized device, you'll pay steeply for it, and the specs will seem to be from devices several years old. Here's one more device that can stand up to the elements and keep on going. It's a $399 device, with only a 160x160 monochrome display, and a 33MHz Dragonball-VZ processor, and the ancient PalmOS 4.1.2. Yet, as TeleRead points out, it just might provide a device that can be an e-book reader around water. Personally, however, I'd rather just grab a case such as this pouch or something slightly more robust.