Conquering the Last Frontier of Mobile Devices–The Battery

Don't you just hate it when your phone's battery drains out just when you're on the road and have to make an urgent phone call? Battery life is the bane of most mobile devices, and possibly the last frontier left to be conquered.

Work has been happening to enhance battery life and even to use solar power in different ways for charging the batteries. Unfortunately, most of these efforts have met limited success so far.

Nokia for instance, had introduced a solar powered prototype with photovoltaic cells packed inside the handset. Unfortunately, it produced just enough charge to keep the phone on standby. Many other players followed suite but met with limited success. Samsung's Blue Earth for instance, was a phone with solar panels on its back, which could provide 5-10 minutes of talk time after 1 hour of charging under direct sunlight. This was grossly insufficient, and it made the phone unusable while charging, since the solar panels are located on its back. Plus, it made the smartphone more bulky. LG's Pop met a similar fate.

But thankfully, work in this area hasn't stopped, with more companies entering the field and introducing even better innovations.

France's Sunpartner for instance, has been working on a technology it calls Wysips (pronounced ‘We Zips' and standing for "What you see is Photovoltaic Surface"), which can convert any medium into a surface that can produce energy from artificial or natural light.

The Wysips technology bonds an ultra-thin photovoltaic layer to a network of micro-lenses. The same can be integrated in a smartphone, either above or below its touchscreen. An electronic chip regulates the power produced by the Wysips crystals and feeds it back into the phone's charging circuit. As a result, the phone would never run out of battery. What's more, the company has been able to achieve 90% transparency with the thin film, making it invisible to the naked eye. Plus, it doesn't impact the phone's functionality in any way. It will continue to have the same contrast, readability, and viewing angle.

Wysips is able to generate up to 2.5 mW/cm2 power in sunlight, which is just sufficient to provide 2-4 additional minutes of talk time on 10 minutes of exposure on a 3G network. By the end of next year, it hopes to achieve 5mW/cm2 of power, which would further reduce the exposure time. Last month, it signed a partnership with TCL Communication, the 7th largest producer of smartphones in the world, to develop prototype smartphones that are powered by solar and artificial light.

It's not as if you'll have to break a bank account to afford smartphones with Wysips based charging. A Wysips layer in a smartphone is expected to cost about 1 Euro.

Long back, we used to have bulky, heavy chargers to charge various devices. With advancements in technology over time, the size, weight, and cost of these adapters reduced considerably. Moving forward, with Wysips and similar developments, you might see these adapters disappear altogether.