Smartphones have advanced so much since their initial introduction to the world that it is almost impossible to believe. They are much more capable of what we had ever imagined they would be.

We use smartphones to make phone calls, to listen to music, to call a cab, to watch movies, to surf the internet, to make payments on the go and literally hundreds of things more. This speaks volumes of how far the smartphone has really come.

One area that has been lacking in innovation however, is battery. We usually have to charge our phones every single day and it takes quite some time to do it. Yes, there have been minor improvements in this field but not nearly enough.

Scientists are hard at work trying to devise methods to charge batteries in seconds and from a long range (like wifi) and even batteries that last for weeks but they might still be a ways away. But, there might be a cool new way to solve our charging woes and it might be on the horizon.

Charge Your Phone Using Ambient Light

The sun literally powers our planet and therefore it is only wise to harness its power for all the stuff that we need it. Solar power generation is witnessing huge improvements and now it has reached a point where we can even print solar cells!

That’s right. Researchers at Dracula Technologies have created a way to print thin and flexible solar cells in any shape or color you want and all that, using just your inkjet printer. How cool is that?

The researchers are calling this technology “LAYER” which stands for ‘Light As Your Energetic Response’. The name of the technology may not be simple, but using the tech itself is, and I don’t think it can get any simpler.

Using this technique, you can harness sunlight as well as artificial light. This is a huge plus for the technology as sunlight may not be always available, making this tech very reliable and versatile.

How It Works

So, there are two ways consumers would be able to use this. First, they could print a “layer” (of solar cells) directly onto an electronic device, so it’s not just limited to smartphones. Then the layer would begin absorbing light and continuously provide a charge to the device.

The other method, which is very cool and almost sci-fi like, is this: You could also fix the printed layer (made up of highly conductive plastic) onto any surface which could capture a larger amount of light. It could be walls, it could be your windows, backpack, t-shirt, etc.

Since the plastic sheet can be custom printed into any shape and they are foldable, you could virtually put them anywhere. All you need to do next, is hook up your device to the sheet and charge away!

It only takes an hour to print these solar cells and they are really cost-effective, so that means you could print a bunch of them and fix them to your most used objects so that you could have the required charge whenever and wherever possible.

Other exciting applications include, hooking them up to IoT devices, CCTV cameras, smart home appliances and virtually any device which could use the localized generation of power.

The exciting part is that the researchers say that the LAYER is almost ready for real world use, as they estimate that only in a few months’ time, they could be used to charge your smartphone.

You can also check out the following video made by the company itself: