Within a couple of years the cell phone evolved in to a Smartphone. Today it has become a day to day item for most of the people. Technological improvement made by lots of Smartphone manufactures such as Apple, HTC, Samsung and LG made this possible.
You may remember that, when you were using a cell phone you had to charge it may be once in few days. If you go back to time of Nokia 2G phones you had to charge them only once a week.
If you take a look at the Smartphone that you are using today, practically you have to charge it every day. If you are a heavy user you might have to charge it couple of times a day.
Most of the Smartphone batteries are in a technological dead-end. Therefore we have to look for alternative renewable energy sources for Smartphone.
Most probably we will be walking toward hybrid power sources. The ultimate objective in this kind of technological improvement would be manufacturing “Self Sustaining Smartphone” which you will never have to charge manually.
Quick Catch-up
Solar Panel
The idea of attaching a solar panel to Smartphone was around for a while. As it appears this is a practical idea. It’s already there in calculator and hybrid cars as well. But the big question is where to mount a solar panel in a Smartphone.
Large part of the surface in Smartphone is dominated by its massive touch screen. So the most practical area to mount a Solar panel would be back cover. But would it work?
When you are using a Smartphone you hold it face up, in other words display is facing the sky and back panel is facing down. So mounting a solar panel in back cover is not a good idea if you consider the efficiency.
Then only remaining option is front panel. But there is no way for you find a space for a solar panel there due to the large display. But have you ever heard of transparent solar panels?
Transparent Solar Panel
A conventional solar panel is having non transparent material and most of the time it’s having brownish surface. But couple of manufactures has already published details of their transparent and flexible solar panel.
- Google Result for “Transparent Solar Panel”
However none of these products are not yet optimized to use in day to day applications. But speed of technology will take them there with in the next few years for sure.
This opens a new world of opportunities of “Self Sustaining Smartphone”. Now Smartphone manufactures can mount a transparent solar panel on top of display. This solves most of the problems I discussed earlier.
Practical Problems
It’s true that this will be innovative alternative energy source for future Smartphones. But just think, most of the time you will be using your Smartphone indoors where you have poor sunlight and rest of the time it will be in your pocket where it has no sunlight.
Due to the above reasons transparent solar panel alone won’t be enough to achieve the goal “Self Sustaining Smartphone” though it’s a good start. However it will be able to increase the battery life up to a certain level.
To achieve this objective “Self Sustaining Smartphone”, we will have to go beyond all the traditional lines and think about “Variable Magnetic Field Charging” and “Motion Charging”.
Stay tuned for my discussion on this regard which will be coming up on Notes of Genius within next few days.
Tags: #Smartphone