Surrounding yourself with chargers is pretty much the norm nowadays. Keeping one at home, one at the office, making sure your folks have one around if you go to their place… you need backups everywhere because Murphy’s Law is true – exactly when you need to make a call or answer to an email, your phone will run out of juice. That’s doesn’t mean recharging is less of a hassle. Researchers from the University of Washington know that pretty well so they’ve come up with a phone that doesn’t need batteries to work #mobilemagic
The brainiacs led by Vamsi Talla developed a prototype cell phone that functions without batteries. So, how can it make a call or send a text? Thanks to ambient radio signals. These can be sensed by the device from a basestation located 31 feet (9.4 m) away. Plus, if the cell gathers light via photodiodes, it can work from even a greater distance (50 feet or 15.2 m).
As you can imagine, the device is not only functional but also low on power consumption, using only a few micro-watts of power. The tech “can sense speech, actuate the earphones, and switch between uplink and downlink communications, all in real time.”, writes the team.
Who would want a cell without batteries? Well, if the design is licensed to smartphone makers that could include it in their models, the answer is: everyone. If not, the cellphone could appeal to people who find themselves easily in dangerous situations, like firefighters or rescue teams, or even folks from remote regions in the world.
Now, though, the cellphone is pretty rudimentary. Researchers simply put off-the-shelf components on a printed circuit board to demonstrate its viability. In the future thought, they could add low-power displays (such as those used for Kindle) and cameras.
Follow TechTheLead on Google News to get the news first.
