February 10, 2012 By

Could Smartphones with Solar Cells Improve Battery Life?

As modern day Smartphones continue to develop we find ourselves in the realms of HD displays, quad-core processors and 6’’ screens, it is no wonder manufacturers are looking into ways of making their device’s battery life last more than just a few hours. It just so happens that a Mr Arman Ahnood from the London Centre for Nanotechnology has a possible solution: Smartphone screens with built in solar panels.

Ahnood is now developing a prototype that uses solar cells to collect wasted energy from OLED displays. Apparently only 36% of the light produced by an OLED display is projected out and the rest is wasted. This wasted light, which is scattered or “bleeding” from the edge of the display, can be harnessed with photovoltaic cells, built into the screen itself.

Ahnood’s system currently has an efficiency of 11%, producing a total output of five miliwatts on a typical 3.7-inch device, which is far from what a smartphone needs. According to this research (PDF link), a typical smartphone uses up to several hundred miliwatts, and as much as 68.6 miliwatts in a suspended state.

So keep an eye out people as this genius may be about to revolutionise modern smartphones batteries as we know it.

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Comments

  1. Shaun McGill says:
    February 10, 2012 at 5:48 pm

    I see this as a long term solution, but not one that we are likely to see in the near future. There is a potentially brilliant solution on the horizon though that could at the very least double battery life while reducing the size of mobile batteries.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15735478

    • Chris Ward says:
      February 13, 2012 at 9:43 am

      That’s an interesting article, I missed it when it came up. Battery life is one feature of smartphones that needs to be improved. It’s all well and good having powerful devices, but the battery life needs to match the power.