by Patrick Altoft on March 31, 2007
A start up company called Powercast has announced partnerships with over 100 of the worlds largest electronics companies and aims to revolutionise the way modern devices are powered.
Powercast has developed a technology allowing devices to be powered simply by beaming electricity through the air. The application uses nothing more complex that a radio and is cheap enough to be integrated into virtually any product during manufacture. A small receiver, costing around £2.50, can be fitted to any low voltage device to turn radio waves into electricity with a range of a few feet.
The applications of this technology are truly groundbreaking. Mobile phones will charge as you sit down at your desk, your wireless keyboard and mouse will never need charging and the MP3 player that always runs down will charge when you leave it on your desk.
Powercast aims to ship millions of the devices in 2008 and are starting a partnership with Philips, who were amazed by the technology last summer.
Expect this to be THE technology application of the next 3 years.
by Patrick Altoft on March 27, 2007
A new phone has emerged today called the Philips Xenium which uses AAA batteries to offer a standby time of 5 weeks.
The standard Xenium phones are already industry leaders in terms of battery life with standby times of 1 month. Thanks to a BackuPower system this latest phone adds over a week to this figure by allowing users to simply insert a standard AAA battery.
Whilst this is a great idea we can’t really imagine why a month wouldn’t be enough standby time for anybody.
Techtium’s BackuPower(TM) is a unique hybrid battery management technology that solves the most frustrating cell phone problem: a dead battery. Techtium’s BackuPower(TM) is a mixed-signal IC with patented charging and battery type detection algorithms capable of bi-directional recharging.
With Techtium’s revolutionary technology, when a rechargeable standard sized battery is inserted into a phone’s cavity, it too shall be recharged simultaneously with the main battery when the phone is connected to an external charger.
With BackuPower(TM), customers are ensured that the phone has the backup power needed in order to stay always on.
Via Uber Phones
by Patrick Altoft on March 19, 2007
Philips are clearly targeting the female market with the black and gold Philips 598 music phone.
The integrated women’s diary and calendar, shopping list, discount manager, price table, personal card information, body weight index and basal metabolic rate measurements are not going to interest men very much.
Measuring 83 x 43 x 20 mm and weighing in at 83 grams the 598 is quite a small handset and looks OK. The external Organic LED display is about the only remarkable feature of this phone which just doesn’t seem good enough to compete with any of the girl targetted handsets launched this year.
Via Slash Phone
by Patrick Altoft on January 30, 2007
Philips have made a welcome return to the mobile phone market with a range of long life cell phones.
With an extremely long battery life of 40 days and 40 nights these phones will hardly ever need charging.
There are not a huge number of high end features but the 9@9t (right) has handwriting recognition and all the phones have a 1.3 mega pixel camera, MP3 player and SD card slot.
Via Gizmodo
