While the Palm Pre’s Touchstone manages to charge the Palm Pre sans wires, thanks to a little bit of magnetic induction technology, the Pre still needs to be in physical contact (or at least close enough for the Touchstone’s magnetic field to work its magic) with the Touchstone to draw a charge. Nokia, on the other hand, is pursuing a research path that could one day lead us to a new kind of power-charging technology – the ability to charge your mobile phone wirelessly via radio waves. Nokia calls it “ambient charging” technology because it draws power from the ambient radio waves (FM radio, WiFi, Bluetooth, etc.). There is research being done on transmitting energy over large distances using magnetic fields, but Nokia’s “ambient charging” technology is much more compelling because it can draw power from any radio source (although, they weren’t the first to travel this research path).
The idea is to tap into the energy carried by the radio waves that pervade our everyday lives. Everyday, we swim through a soup of EM radiation – why not put all that energy to work? At the moment, Nokia is only able to draw 3-5 mW of power from a nearby radio source (like a WiFi base station). Nokia needs to hit 50 mW of “ambient charging” power draw to make the technology viable. Whether Nokia is able to pull it off is still not clear, but it’s good to know we have some creative Nokia boffins toiling away to drive mobile innovation!
[Via: PocketPicks]