Nokia has taken the wireless concept to the next level. The wireless revolution began with radio, and then television, and has progressed over the decades to the cell phones almost everyone carries today. Smartphones don’t just make and receive calls. They connect to the Internet, allowing users to send and receive e-mail, peruse any number of Web sites, and even keep up with friends via social media sites. If Nokia is successful, phones may soon be able to recharge without being plugged into either a computer or an outlet.
Wireless power has been the focus of a lot of research for several years now. Being able to power everything from a light bulb to a computer to a washing machine wirelessly would change the way consumers live and work. But while experiments with light bulbs have been, for the most part, successful, powering an entire home or office building is still a long ways off.
Right now, battery life on cell phones, while constantly improving, still leaves quite a bit to be desired. Phones come with AC adapters, and in some cases, USB charging cables. Also widely available are cables that allow you to charge your phone in the car. Cell phone makers are acutely aware of the great need to keep phones juiced up and functioning, no matter where we are. Battery life is one of the standard features listed in just about any cell phone’s technical information. It’s sometimes a factor in the decision to buy one phone over another. And even if it’s not, sometimes wireless customers just find themselves in situations where charging a cell phone is difficult to impossible. At a theme park for the day, for example. Or on a hike where a cell phone would be a necessity should an accident occur.
Nokia has the solution for those kinds of situations, and a convenience for all others. They’ve invented a cell phone that recharges using ambient radio waves, turning those waves of energy into actual power. Radio waves are emitted by televisions, radio, and mobile phone systems. No real effort has been made to harness any of that energy, so most of it is wasted and just scatters into the atmosphere. Nokia’s phone collects bits of those emitted waves, and then uses that collected energy to create an electrical current, which is then used to charge the phone’s battery.
This kind of ambient energy isn’t enough to power anything of any substantial size. The phone is currently only able to gather five milliwatts. Nokia’s goal is to increase that number by at least ten in the near future. Even then, it wouldn’t be enough to keep a phone alive during an actual phone call, but could recharge the battery in standby mode.
There’s still work to be done, but there’s a lot of potential. Imagine never having to plug your phone in at all, and your phone’s battery always being charged and ready. Nokia says it plans to commercialize the technology in three to five years. Whether making calls, surfing the Internet, blogging, or microblogging, we could be doing so completely wirelessly before the end of the next decade.
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