That frustration building up from constantly seeing that red battery icon on the side of your screen, making you run around in look for a port to charge your phone could be just a memory we leave in the past.
The only real problem facing mobile phone users over recent years could be related to the battery power… or the lack of it.
As unbelievable as it may sound, engineers at the University of Washington could be on the verge of cracking the codes to a revolutionary invention that will change the mobile phones industry for many years to come.
According to Shyam Gollakota, associate professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the UW, “We’ve built what we believe is the first functioning cellphone that consumes almost zero power.”
Researchers at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering have created the first ever mobile powered without a battery. We’re in the process of witnessing a major leap forward into a world free of cords and dying phones.
Inspired by components used during the cold war, this radio technology dates back to the Soviet Union era. The device uses ambient radio signals and light to make voice calls using off-the-shelf components found in most stores.
The smartphone created by UW researchers is a board with number keys from 0-9 and a * and a # button. The device sends a series of digital pulses to a receiver, which later on encodes them into a Skype call.
This is just the beginning according to the researchers, “You could imagine in the future that all cell towers or Wi-Fi routers could come with our base station technology embedded in it, and if every house has a Wi-Fi router in it, you could get battery-free cell-phone coverage everywhere.” says Vamsi Talla, a research associate at UW.
With future aims of using Wi-Fi technology to power a battery-less phone, the future can only be bright for us lazy Nomophobics.
