Here we go, another in the not-really-a-blog-category-at-all-so-I-have-to-file-it-under-mobile-phone-news category of future sci-fi phone technology. And today’s post is all about batteries. Specifically, it’s about batteries that that use piezoelectric trickery to constantly recharge themselves, according to Symbian Freak. In other words, the battery in your phone will constantly regenerate itself, much like Wolverine.
Whether it’ll also be an irascible hairy dude with a Canadian accent is, however, not specified…
The idea comes in the form of a new Nokia patent, in which the Finnish manufacturer envisages a phone where the heavy bits (like the antenna, battery and so on) are supported in a frame. And that frame can then move, mounted on two sets of rails, with one letting it move up and down, and the other letting it move side to side. Stick piezoelectric contacts on those rails, and you have a phone that generates electricity when the internal sturdy frame thing clatters against the contacts, i.e. when the phone moves about.
Combine that with a capacitor to constantly trickle charge the battery, and you have a phone that (even when it’s just in your pocket), when it moves about constantly regenerates the battery. Like Wolverine.
Hmm, actually, no, not like Wolverine, that’s just silly. I’ll tell you what it is, it’s the ARC reactor in Tony Stark’s chest (hastily changes the image on this blog post). You know, Tony Stark, as in Iron Man, as in ‘starring in Iron Man 2, the second trailer for which has been released today’ (masterfully executed segue).
Yes, I did just do an entire blog post on an unrelated topic, just so I could show you the new Iron Man 2 trailer. Go, me.
Oh, alright, I’ll stick to mobile phones, sorry…
Now, while this new patent may not be as super-sci-fi as the carbon-nanotube-battery story from a while back, it’s way up there. Imagine, in the future, with some future incarnation of the Nokia N900. Y’know, where you’re surfing the web on it, making calls, listening to music, doing all the things you normally do (and probably future things, since, y’know, it’ll be in THE FUTURE), only you never have to plug it in and charge it. It does all that while it’s in your pocket, and you’re just walking about.
That’ll be awesome. But then, I would say that, I’m from the Star Wars generation; if you say ‘the future’ to us, we don’t think ‘something that will happen possibly tomorrow’, we think ‘spaceships, robots, lasers, pew pew pew, Chewbacca, teleporters, FLYING CARS, ah-hahahahahahaha‘. And then, we think wistfully of the late, great Arthur C Clarke.
So, yes, essentially, what I’m saying is that Nokia are going to turn mobile phones into the Millennium Falcon. Or possibly HAL…
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