Nokia Develops Phones That Charge Themselves

Posted by Tanya Hall

June 11, 2009

One of my biggest hates in life is the dreadded “low battery” on any device- especially my mobile when I want to text my mate to tell them about something embarrassing that’s just happened to me. Luckily for me (or unluckily for my pride) Nokia have developed a prototype phone that can be charged from wherever you are without having to plug it into a main socket. nokia

Nokia boffins have created a phone able to power itself from ambient radiowaves. This means that it can charge itself up from the weak TV, radio, wi-fi and mobile phone signals that constantly surround us.

Granted the power captured by this means is on the small side but it is almost enough to power a mobile in standby mode without ever having to plug it in for more juice.

Eventually, Nokia wants to use this technology to charge a phone completely from a dead battery. To do this, it will need to harvest 50 milliwatts of power.

Currently prototypes can harvest 3 to 5 milliwatts, so there’s still a bit of a way to go before you can rely on watching Emmerdale to keep your handset charged.

Nokia researcher Markku Rouvala said that the concept is based on the idea behind an RFID tag – converting electromagnetic waves into an electrical signal. It is also the same concept as London’s Oyster cards that power themselves from radiowaves emitted by the reader devices when they are swiped.

While Nokia say that this development is still in early stages, it believes that new wirelessly powered handsets could be in stores in as little as three years’ time.

Source: Guardian

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