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Many people find charging their mobile phones to be a hassle, especially when they are on the go.  Nokia thinks it has the solution: a phone that charges itself.  A new charging system it’s working on allows a phone to charge itself using ambient radiowaves.  Such waves are all around us thanks to TVs, radios and mobile phones themselves.  The power harvested from these waves is enough to keep a phone powered in standby mode indefinitely.

The Oyster cards used by commuters in London use a similar principle but harvest their power from the readers they are swiped through.  Nokia’s prototype harvests it right from the air.

The system works using a wide band antenna and two simple circuits.  They pick up frequencies ranging from 500 megahertz to 10 gigahertz and convert the waves into electrical current.  So far they have been able to harvest up to 5 millliwatts and hope to get at least 20, which would be enough to keep a phone in standby mode.

Steve Beeby, an expert in harvesting ambient energy at the University of Southampton, said it would be a remarkable achievement. . “Radio frequency power falls off exponentially with distance,” he says.

Don’t run out to the store just yet and grab one of these.  Phones with such a charging system are not expected to be on the market for another 3-5 years.

Read [The Guardian]