Self charging cell phones
A Self Charging Cell Phone: Find a New Excuse for Ending Your Calls
We have all done it at one point in our lives; we have used a dying cell phone battery as a reason to get out of an uncomfortable or interminable phone conversation. In Cambridge, England, the Nokia Research Centre wants to take away that excuse. A current cell phone user must plug in his or her phone to charge it; how often it must be charged depends on the type of phone, the amount of usage, and the other various applications. Obviously it will take more juice to play a game or listen to music than it does to simply make a phone call. Some phones just hold a charge better than others do. If the new technology is effective, cell phone users will no longer be tied down to their chargers.
The new system that is being developed will collect energy from ambient radio waves which are emitted from “antennas, TV masts, Wi-Fi transmitters, etc.” (Vaknin 2009). The technology itself is not new, and has been used by stores as security for years, like www.acnecuresrevealed.net. Radio frequency identification (RFID) is used in stores to detect special tags to prevent theft. This technology is being tested to allow the new Nokia phones to “catch the radio waves and harness them for power.” (Vaknin 2009).
The current goal for the new technology is 50 milliwatts of power although there are many questions of how effective that could actually be. The current rate of harvest is only 5 milliwatts, not enough to run the phone. (About four times as much power is needed to put the phone into standby mode without needing a charge.)
Think about how much you use your cell phone each day. Do you make only a few calls or maybe text a few times or do you use your phone much more than that? The business world stays connected right at the palm of the business person’s hand, so would 50 milliwatts be even close to enough in that case or would it be relegated to only the occasional or emergency cell phone user?
Three models are being worked on by French researchers as well. One model generates power from opening and closing it, for business applications. The other two models are designed to be worn, one by athletes which is worn around the wrist and one by the average person which is worn around the neck (Thomas 2006).
References:
Justin Thomas. Modelabs Designs Three Self-Charging Phones. Posted December 23, 2006 on http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006 retrieved from same on August 16, 2009
Sharon Vaknin. Nokia Powering Up Self-Charging Cell Phone. Posted June 18, 2009 on http://www.news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10267006.1html retrieved from same on August 16, 2009
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