2009 · Green IT

Samsung Blue Earth: the 2009 solar-powered phone

Last reviewed 5 November 2026

At Mobile World Congress in February 2009 Samsung unveiled the Blue Earth, a touchscreen phone with a solar panel on the back, a case made from recycled water bottles and a pedometer that counted the carbon you saved by walking.

The launch

Samsung unveiled the Blue Earth at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February 2009, the industry’s biggest annual show. It was a full touchscreen phone with a smooth, pebble-like shape, and its selling point was printed on its back: a solar panel that could charge the battery from sunlight. Samsung described it as the first solar-powered full-touch phone.

Green phones were a theme of that year’s show. LG showed its own solar-charging handset at the same event, and other makers talked up recyclable packaging and low-power chargers. Climate change was high on the political agenda ahead of the Copenhagen summit at the end of 2009, and phone makers wanted to be seen to respond.

What made it “green”

The solar panel was only one part of the pitch. The case was made from PCM, recycled plastic recovered from used water bottles, and the phone came in recycled paper packaging. Samsung said the handset and charger were free of harmful substances such as brominated flame retardants, beryllium and phthalates.

The charger was rated five stars for energy efficiency and drew less than 0.03 watts when left plugged in with nothing attached. In 2009, when chargers left in the wall drawing power all day were a common complaint, that was a selling point in its own right.

The software tried to change habits too. An “Eco mode” button dimmed the screen, shortened the backlight time and turned Bluetooth to a power-saving setting in one press. An “Eco Walk” feature used a built-in pedometer to count your steps and show how much carbon dioxide you had saved by walking instead of driving, expressed as a number of trees.

Could the sun really charge it?

Only a little. A panel the size of the back of a phone, in direct sunlight, produces well under a watt, and much less indoors or in cloud. That was enough to top up the battery for some extra talk time or keep a phone alive in an emergency, but not to replace the mains charger for most people. Reviewers at the time treated the panel as a useful backup rather than a way to go off-grid.

The physics has not changed. Solar chargers work well as separate fold-out panels with far more surface area, but a phone-sized panel cannot keep up with a modern smartphone’s screen and radios.

Other solar phones of 2009

The Blue Earth was the most stylish of a short-lived wave. Samsung also sold cheaper solar handsets aimed at markets where mains power was unreliable, including the E1107 “Crest Solar”, launched in India in 2009. In Japan, Sharp released a waterproof solar-charging phone the same year. LG’s solar model put a panel on the battery cover of a more conventional handset.

Samsung said the Blue Earth would launch in the UK in the second half of 2009. It never became a mass-market hit, and by the time it arrived the iPhone and the first Android phones were changing what people expected from a handset.

What happened to solar phones

Smartphones killed the idea. Large bright screens, fast processors and always-on data use far more energy than a 2009 feature phone, and there is no room for a big enough panel. Solar phones survived mainly as rugged or low-cost models for outdoor work and places without reliable electricity.

The rest of the Blue Earth’s agenda did not disappear. Recycled plastics, ultra-low standby chargers and energy labels are now ordinary. Several manufacturers stopped putting chargers in phone boxes from 2020, arguing it cut waste, and the EU’s common charger law made USB-C the standard connector for phones sold there from the end of 2024.