Power up! Self-charging phones are on their way, finally

The case that Will Zell slides onto his iPhone doesn’t look that unusual, but it’s doing something pretty out of the ordinary: capturing some of the radio waves that the phone transmits when connecting to cell-phone towers and Wi-Fi routers, converting them to electricity, and feeding that power back to the phone’s battery.

Zell is the CEO of Nikola Labs, a startup based in Columbus, Ohio, whose energy-harvesting technology was invented by Chi-Chih Chen, a research associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Ohio State University. Like battery pack cases, the company’s case plugs into the bottom of the iPhone; this way, Zell says, it can intermittently send power right to the battery.

Battery evolution: Moore’s Law, which predicts that the number of transistors on a chip doubles every two years, has held steady since 1975. Yet battery technology hasn’t kept the same pace, probably because its evolution is dependent on advances in chemistry. So while smartphones have gotten increasingly capable, with faster processors, better displays, and higher-resolution cameras, it can still be a challenge to get the battery that’s powering all these features to last throughout the day.

One way the consumer electronics industry is trying to fix this is by aligning with wireless charging technologies like Qi and Rezence. So far, though, only a handful of smartphones from companies like LG, Samsung, and, HTC use the Qi standard, while Rezence-supporting handsets are set to come out later this year.

WiFi charging: With such wireless charging still far from the mainstream (and still requiring your phone to be on a charging mat or base that itself plugs into a wall), a few companies, including Nikola Labs, are trying to figure out other ways to make you less dependent on outlets so you can keep using your phone for battery-intensive things like looking at websites, navigating trips, and streaming videos.

They won’t make plugging your phone into a charger obsolete, but Zell says that Nikola’s phone case should be able to give users about 25 to 30 per cent more battery life between charges. The company built its first working prototype of a smartphone case this spring and plans to start selling it in the first three months of next year for about $100 (a Kickstarter campaign for the company had raised about $74,000 of its $135,000 goal; Zell says Nikola Labs has separately raised private funding to bring its product to market).

Then there are solar cells: A French solar technology company called Sunpartner Technologies is already working on this with a thin, see-through overlay called WYSIPS Crystal (the acronym stands for “what you see is photovoltaic surface”) that sits between the glass and touch-screen layers on a smartphone or other mobile gadget. The WYSIPS layer is covered with small solar cells; when the phone is exposed to artificial or natural light, it captures the light and converts it to an electric current. A connection to the gadget’s battery would enable the layer to send power directly to it.

— Source: www.technologyreview.com