Today
at the TechCrunch Disrupt event in New York, the future of smartphone batteries
might have been introduced. Nikola Labs took the stage a few hours ago at the
conference and unveiled a case for the iPhone 6 that can charge the smartphone by
harvesting energy from external radio frequencies.
According
to the company, more than 90 percent of the energy that smartphones use to
maintain voice and data connections is wasted in thin air. The case unveiled
today by Nikola Labs can capture that energy and use it to charge the
smartphone, allegedly expanding the battery life of the iPhone 6 by about 30
percent.
To
enable this magical charging capability, the case uses two pieces of technology
developed and patented by the Ohio State University. The first is a
"harvesting" antenna that can capture energy from the radio
frequencies surrounding the smartphone, and the second is a RF-DC converter
that transforms this energy into DC current that the smartphone can actually
use. Nikola Labs says that its case can harvest energy from Wi-Fi,
Bluetooth, and LTE frequencies. The case does not store energy, and the
process is a passive and continuous one, meaning that power is added to the
smartphone very slowly.
At
the TechCrunch Disrupt NewYork conference, the company demonstrated that the
case can also draw power from radio frequencies not emitted by the smartphone:
when placed next to Wi-Fi router, the case started generating DC current.
Nikola
Labs plans to transform this technology into an actual product by launching a
Kickstarter campaign. The campaign will debut in about a month's time, the case
will be priced at $99, and the first units are expected to start shipping at
some point by the end of September.
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