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Thursday, August 21, 2014

Make your music charge your phone

While most of us are struggling to keep a charge on our phones and other mobile devices, we often turn to bigger batteries, extra power sources and software power saving measures to get through our day. While all of these measure satisfy our needs, researchers in London have another approach in mind, charging a device with sound.

The premise is simple, kinetic energy is harnessed to produce electricity, we've heard about this in numerous Japanese roads and walkways, and even old wrist watches that shake to charge. Sure, the tech is a little different, but the idea remains the same, physical actions performed on an object can be converted into electricity.

In the case of Queen Mary University in London, the devices are made to be not much larger than a couple quarters in size, small enough to fit inside the average smartphone, and accepts the vibration from sounds to do all the dirty work.


At this scale, the power generated is not quite enough to fully power your device, but I would imagine a slow trickle charge would be an amazing thing to have to help us all enjoy our mobile devices without having to tune it down for the battery's sake.

My Android Authority post has more details and ideas, I'd head over there and check it out, if I was interested in having more power for my Android device... Which I most certainly am!



The application of this tech sounds great and all, but I wonder what long term affects this would have on a battery. The life of a battery is generally calculated by its recharge cycles. Don't get me wrong, having a near constant trickle charge should not directly speed up your cycles, but I just do not know enough about these electronics, nor is there enough info available just yet, to figure out if there will be an negatives to this technology.

What do you think, do you need a little extra power boost for your mobile devices? Do you make enough noise throughout the day to keep this tech charging?

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