Samsung is a major player in the cell phone industry. Two major issues with today’s cell phones are battery life and charge times, an inconvenience to users the company is well aware of.  Samsung's plans for a water powered cell phone were recently leaked; no, not that kind of water power -- the modified cell phone design does not use hydroelectricity, but rather breaks apart water and uses the hydrogen obtained for power.

The news follows in line with many advances in the small fuel cell industry.  MTI Micro, a small methanol fuel cell maker, recently announced that they will be rolling out fuel cells for cameras, phone chargers, and more next year.  Samsung has been among the companies investigating fuel cell stacks as battery replacements for laptops.

Samsung's new plans for water-powered cell phones utilize a metal catalyst that becomes a metal hydroxide in a reversible process, yielding hydrogen.  Details on the metal and exact process are scant, so it is hard to ascertain where exactly the process is at in terms of development or exactly how it works.  Likely it operates similarly to Purdue's recently discovered method of high-efficiency hydrogen production using metal, perhaps even using the same method.

While keeping tight lipped on the details, Samsung is making the bold prediction that our cell phones will be running on water by 2010.  Their engineers claim that a working prototype currently provides 10 hours of use.  This, according to Samsung, equates to about 5 days of life in a normal use scenario.  The engineers say that they are modifying the phone to make it easy to be able to top up on the go (drinking fountain anyone?).

The idea of fast free power for your cell phone is certainly an exciting one.  If Samsung can beat its competitors to market with a cell phone "battery" that in theory never dies, it certainly will be in an advantageous position.  Now if they can only work on making sure you always get a signal.