As we all get excited for what should be a very exciting Mobile World Congress 2015 in Barcelona, most people will be looking to the big manufacturers and seeing what new and amazing things they have brought as their flagship devices. At the other end of the spectrum though, Kyocera will be reminding us that the MWC is also about the smaller technologies that have the potential for changing the way we live and work with our mobile devices. To that, Kyocera will be bringing a solar-powered mobile device to the floor.
Now, a solar-powered smartphone is not even news – most consumers can pretty much imagine the concept. Maybe it will be a smartphone that will have photovoltaic cells at the back. But that’s not how Kyocera is actually imagining it. What if the entire screen of your mobile phone is one big photovoltaic receptor? What if you can charge your phone as you are using it, with a screen that will convert even artificial light to electric charge?
That’s what Kyocera is proposing and unveiling this MWC 2015– it has taken one of its old smartphones (we don’t know which one yet) and teamed up with Sunpartner Technologies and their WYSIPS Crystal tech to make the whole front panel of the smartphone a solar charging mechanism. The WYSIPS Crystal tech combines “optical and photovoltaic technologies” and it is “ultrathin and transparent”, making it a good combination for the front screen of a mobile device.
Even if it doesn’t make it to smartphones just yet, think about the tech being applied to e-readers and low cost mobile phones – these have lesser power requirements than normal smartphones. If the tech works out for these devices, we can be looking at a new generation of self-sufficient, self-powering mobile devices.
VIA: G For Games
There was a solar powered Samsung phone on sprint a couple years ago