So, you like listening to music and you hate your phone’s battery dying on you? Hey, we might have come across the perfect little gadget for you.
A designer from Glasgow has come up with the idea for a pair of headphones which can be used to allow your phone to get charged up using solar energy.
The man with the plan is called Andrew Anderson and his headphones are called OnBeat. They are on the crowdfunding site Kickstarter and the hope is that they will be on sale by the start of 2014.
A Battery in Each Ear
They work by using a solar cell, which has a charge capacity of 0.55 watts and is fitted into the headphone band. When this cell converts the power of the sun into energy you can use this is then stored in a couple of tiny lithium batteries. These batteries are stored away with one in each earpad. While you are using your phone they will get to work on recharging it.
The clever inventor says that the idea was down to his Dad, Frank. He now needs to pull together £200,000 in order to gets his headphones into the production stage, although he admits that they are still trying to improve the design and give a better performance.
This isn’t the only work in progress which could give us longer lasting phones in the future. For example, there are some inventors working on letting our feet recharge our mobile devices. A US contender on Kickstarter is called Solepower and is being developed at Carnegie Mellon University. In this case, you need to walk between 2 and a half and 5 miles in order to charge an iPhone.
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