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New Phone Case Will Let You Charge Your iPhone Using Radio Waves

by Gillian Fuller

Thanks to tech startup Nikola Labs, dead smartphones may soon be things of the past.

The company recently created a “smart” smartphone case that converts radio waves in the air into chargeable energy for your device, keeping your phone from falling into the dreaded 1 percent battery range pretty much forever.

Dr. Rob Lee, cofounder of Nikola Labs and the $99 smartphone case, wanted to find a way to harness a phone's wasted energy and convert it into usable energy.

According to Dr. Lee, some 97 percent of a smartphone's energy is wasted and emitted from the device as radio wave frequencies.

By capturing these waves and converting them into chargeable energy, Dr. Lee and his team created a phone charger that works around the clock to keep your phone alive and can be used anywhere, anytime.

The recharging process is slow, so it won't do you much good if your phone is dying and you want to quickly zap it to 100 percent. That's another miracle for another day.

What it does do, however, is continually provide your phone with energy, prolonging the device's battery life (by up to 30 percent) and keeping it out of the danger zone.

Dr. Lee and his team at Ohio State's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering recently received a license from the university to turn the invention into a marketable, profitable product, and they'll be launching a Kickstarter campaign for the revolutionary invention next month.

Here's to retiring the term “dead battery” for good.

Citations: Nikola Labs case uses stray radio waves to charge your iPhone (Engadget)