This is incredible! Researchers from the University of Washington recently created the first prototype of a battery-free phone powered by radio signals. The phone saves power by using analog versus digital voice encoding, and has a range that comes from tiny solar panels called photodiodes. In the future, the inventors hope to license the technology to current smartphone makers to enable emergency calls without concern over battery charge. Another direction for the technology is to expand the current prototype and create a bare-bones phone that would never need to be recharged but would still be able to make calls and send texts.
Phones that don't ever need to be charged have clear benefits in emergencies. This technology could also help democratize phone access in developing countries or remote areas where energy is a scarce resource.
Credit to: Peter Diamandis, Sydney Fulkerson and the Abundance Insider.