If you are frustrated by your smartphones’ battery life, there is maybe some good news for you, on the horizon. A new research in the University of Washington has created a mobile phone prototype that does not require any battery to operate: battery-free cell phone.
This prototype requires only a few microwatts of power, 3.5 microwatts to be exact. The new design can sense speech, actuate the earphones, and switch between uplink and downlink communications, all in real time
It uses the ambient power from the radio signals and lights to its onboard solar cells are “the size of rice”. It can transmit the signal back to the base station 50 feet (15.2 m) away.
Also, the researchers successfully made the first Skype call using a battery-free phone over a cellular network, via our custom bridged base station.
“You could imagine in the future that all cell towers or Wi-Fi routers could come with our base station technology embedded in it,” Tall said. That means, if you could find the router in every house, you could get battery-free cellphone coverage everywhere.”
They used the regular materials like capacitive touch buttons, a circuit board, and other “off the shelf” components. However, its just a prototype, the fully functional smartphones might take a little while.
Nevertheless, this could be the best achievement so far in the context of battery life of any gadgets. It also provides the base further development of battery-less gadgets in the future.
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