One thing I always love, ‘cos it’s really sci-fi-ish, is seeing devices that can be charged up wirelessly. I reckon it’s probably because I first saw the idea of wireless power in Action Force: The Movie (GI Joe, to any American readers), way back in 1987. Since then, everything that can be charged up wirelessly, like the Palm Pre with its ‘Touchstone’ charger, reminds me of the Broadcast Energy Transmitter (B.E.T.) from that film, and thus makes me feel like I’m 10 years old again…
Well, according to The Register, Nokia are working on tech that’ll make their phones draw power out of thin air, just like the machines being fed power from the B.E.T.
And it relies on something called AER, or Ambient Electromagnetic Radiation. All the signals zipping around us every day, like mobile phones, WiFi and TV masts contribute to AER. Yep, it’s what the scaremongers say is slowly cooking our brains.
Nokia’s prototype technology, however, is designed to suck up AER, using it to trickle-charge the phone, in much the same way that RFID tags (like the ones in Oyster cards) keep themselves charged. At the moment, the power yield isn’t very high, but future prototype phones are bound to increase that, leading to, some day, a Nokia phone that’ll suck power straight out of the air round you.
Just imagine that… some day, something like the future version of the Nokia N97, effectively breathing in power from the atmosphere round it.
Told you it was sci-fi-ish…
The cool news, though, is that “some day” in this case translates as Nokia saying, “We reckon we can get phones to the market with this in about 3-4 years.”
It’ll be phasers set to stun, and death stars, and cloning dinosaurs next, I’m tellin’ ya…
More news as it happens! And be sure to subscribe now to get all the latest action from the world of mobile phones!