Motorola Develops Self-Powered Display For Mobile Phones

Motorola has recently patented a self-powered display that will likely change the way mobile phone technlogy is used. One of the biggest problems facing today’s mobile phones is the fact that the displays, and all of the features require a great deal of electricity to operate, which makes for shorter battery life than most consumers want. So if they could figure out a way to harness the power of solar energy in an effective way, battery life could be extended by using solar power for the display.

Motorola has developed its solar-powered display to meet the rising power demands of mobile phones. As more and more features have been incorporated into cellphones - such as wireless internet access, video cameras, music players and GPS location-finding capabilities - their lithium-ion batteries have started to struggle to keep up. To give batteries a longer lifetime between charges without adding to their size and weight, manufacturers have tried fitting solar cells behind phones’ LCD displays. Till now this has not been successful, because the LCD absorbs most of the incoming light before it can reach the solar cell, says Motorola engineer Zili Li.

Since the development specifically relates to one of the biggest issues faced by most cell phone users (battery life). With the Sun helping power the display, the phone won’t use nearly as much battery power as earlier units. This can only be a good thing for the advancement of cell phones, and is a very important breakthrough because of this improvement of existing technology.

The patent itself, number 7206044, says the following in its’ abstract:

Displays such as liquid crystal displays (10), organic light emitting diode displays, and touch sensitive displays (41) are stacked with one or more solar cells (15) such that light passing through the displays will illuminate the light receiving active surface of the solar cells (15). No reflector or polarizer need be used when the liquid crystal display (10) uses cholesteric or polymer dispersed liquid crystals. When using supertwist nematic or twisted nematic liquid crystals, a reflector (21) can be used that comprises a selective color reflector. The resultant display/solar cell can be utilized in combination with a device such as a wireless communications device (62) with the solar cell (15) providing electricity to the display (61), the wireless communications device (62), or both. A mask (71) can be used to occlude surface features on the solar cell (15) as appropriate to provide a substantially uniformly colored appearance.

The solar cell will provide electricity to the 1) display 2) the communications device, or both. Now that would cut down on battery quite a bit, would it not? The main drawback that can’t be answered by the patent is whether the display quality can match tradition displays. The company has built a prototype, but it’s not ready for consumer release.

Motorola currently employs 25,000 doing Research and Development, and this discovery is some of the fruit of that effort.