The first cell phone without battery: Researchers from Washington University have developed the first phone without batteries. Sound quality is very poor, but imagine that you do not have to charge your phone anymore because it can collect light and radio waves from your environment and turn them into energy.
"We've created what we believe is the first functional mobile phone that consumes almost zero power," said Shyam Gollakota, an associate professor at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science. Science & Engineering of her University Washington.
The researchers used an amazing way to get rid of the most damaging feature of regular cell phones: Converting analog audio signals to digital data.
According to the publication on the University's website, "this n procedure consumes so much energy that it is impossible to design a cell phone that can rely on ambient energy sources.”
To get rid of this part of the process, the researchers devised a way to use the tiny vibrations of the microphone and the speaker of the mobile phone. Thus they were able to encode the incoming and outgoing signals.
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Unfortunately, this does not allow the mobile phone to send and receive audio at the same time. Instead, the caller should press a send or receive button when sending or receiving conversations. In this sense, the device looks more like a portable radiotelephone than a real cell phone.
Currently, the "mobile phone" collects the energy needed by radio signals sent from a dedicated base station and a tiny solar cell on the device.
Researchers say the base stations they are currently using could be installed in cell towers and Wifi routers to allow more freedom of movement without battery.
