Skip to Content
Uncategorized

Is Apple Really Planning Self-Charging iPhones?

An Apple patent is just the latest in a broad industry effort to expand battery life.
September 20, 2012

With short battery life a major hassle for smartphone owners, researchers industrywide are continually seeking easier ways to recharge gadgets and prolong their life between charges.  An interesting Apple patent, filed in July and published today by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, hints at an interesting self-charging idea.

The patent describes as system of printed coils on a circuit board, and moveable magnets. The motion of shaking the phone or walking would move the magnets over the coils, producing electricity. No word on how long it might take such an idea to prove practical. And, of course, Apple patents lots of things.

A number of other efforts aim to attack the problem. These include tricks to use photovoltaics built into displays (see “Energy Harvesting Displays”). A collaboration between Intel and IDT is pursuing wireless charging (see “Intel’s Wireless Power Play”) and so is the startup Witricitity (see “Charge Your Phone and Your Car from Afar”).

Those last two ideas would be extensions of something already possible–charging specially-equipped electronics by sitting them directly on charging pads. Among recent smartphone product releases (most of which boasted of some effort to reduce consumption) the new Nokia phone took a somewhat radical step to include such a pad with the device (see “New Smartphones May be Nokia’s Last Stand.”  

Meantime, try not to use the phone as a flashlight too often.

Keep Reading

Most Popular

Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.

And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.

OpenAI teases an amazing new generative video model called Sora

The firm is sharing Sora with a small group of safety testers but the rest of us will have to wait to learn more.

Google’s Gemini is now in everything. Here’s how you can try it out.

Gmail, Docs, and more will now come with Gemini baked in. But Europeans will have to wait before they can download the app.

This baby with a head camera helped teach an AI how kids learn language

A neural network trained on the experiences of a single young child managed to learn one of the core components of language: how to match words to the objects they represent.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.