Sony Ericsson goes green with Ling and C901 GreenHeart

Sony Ericsson is going green with two new phones announced this week: the C901 GreenHeart and the Ling concept. The GreenHeart is the eco-friendly version of the C902, which has a carbon footprint of 25kg of CO2, while the GreenHeart punts out an admirable 5kg less. It's a mid-range Cyber-shot phone with a 5-megapixel camera, boxed in smaller-than-usual packaging, while the Ling concept will be a no-frills entry-level model responsible for a scant 18kg of CO2.

The idea behind GreenHeart is not to add one eco phone to the line-up, but to green up all Ericsson's phones. Starting with the GreenHeart and the recent Satio, Sony Ericsson is removing paper manuals from all its phones, instead building the instructions into the phone itself. Apparently the manual alone is responsible for 3kg of CO2 -- that's 15 per cent of a phone's carbon footprint, according to Ericsson, a third of which is printing and the rest transport.

Ericsson is also trumpeting a handset-recycling service to complement the WEEE mechanism. A cynic might say that taking useful bits out of your phone package, then taking the phone back so as to sell you another, then reselling the original phone, meanwhile convincing you that you haven't been fleeced but in fact the company has done the entire human race a favour -- well that's just evil genius.

We're not cynics here at Crave, but we did note Ericsson will not be passing on to you any savings in production costs from jettisoning the manual and half the packaging, because it claims the money goes into green-tinted research and development.

The GreenHeart's original concept is pictured above, although the finished model looks slightly different. Other green features include an application utilising the GreenHeart's accelerometer to count your steps and tell you how much CO2 you've saved by not driving. Ling will boast a more advanced Ecomate app to give you even more green facts and figures -- and publish them to social networks, Gaia knows why.

The C901 GreenHeart will arrive in June, and will be available in white. Ling is a concept and should show up in the final quarter of the year, in silver and red. Sony Ericsson is also hinting at a proper business phone next year, and promises standardised microUSB chargers before the end of this year.