While our current smartphones are still demanding more energy to operate, a team of six American researchers at the University of Washington has developed the first cell phone capable of doing without a battery. Still at the prototype stage, the device (or rather the circuit board and its earphones) needs only 3.5 microwatts of electricity to function.
This energy, the device will pick it up in the ambient radio waves through an antenna, and in the light through a tiny solar cell. Note also that the phone was built from components that are found in the trade. It is capable of basic functions: to make or receive calls (with a bad sound quality and by pressing a button to speak, as with a walkie talkie) as well as to put the correspondents on hold. Scientists have even succeeded in getting communication through Skype into VoIP.
Normally, making a phone call requires a lot of energy as it is necessary to convert the analog sound signals, voices, into digital signals. Here, the process was simply deleted. Instead, the user speaks in a passive microphone, the vibrations caused cause electrical variations in radio waves emitted by a nearby base station. These waves picked up by the telephone and then modified by the microphone are then reflected back to the base station, which can interpret the variations to convert them back into audio signals. He then simply sends the result to the networks of the operators.
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