AT&T Solar-Powered Charging Stations Land In New York

If you're out and about for the whole day and are relying on your smartphone for a handful of tasks, you may discover that the battery won't last you the whole day, and what's a person to do when their phone dies and you're nowhere near an outlet? AT&T is looking to solve this problem with solar-powered charging stations planted all throughout the city.

Ma Bell is teaming up with solar-power expert company Goal Zero to deploy a handful of solar-powered charging stations all around New York City. The stations will be placed in strategic locations that are far from outlets, such as parks and boardwalks. Some of the locations you can expected these to pop up at include Coney Island, Central Park, Union Square, Governor's Island, and Hudson River Park.

The first location to get the new charging stations is Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn, and it'll be launching later today. These stations will be called Street Charge stations and they're essentially polls sticking up from the ground with three charging platforms at chest-height that allow you to plug in your mobile device. Further up are helicopter-blade-esque solar panels that provide the power to give juice to your smartphones.

The stations consist of six connectors in total, and there's both 30-pin and Lightning plugs, as well as microUSB for pretty much every other smartphone. However, there's a traditional USB port for using your own cable if your phone comes with a different connector. And yes, these are 2-amp ports, so you'll be able to juice up your iPad as well. There's no word on the launch schedule of more locations in NYC, but AT&T said that they should be launching sporadically over the summer.