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Last week, Patently Apple, a blog "celebrating Apple's spirit of innovation," noticed that Apple engineers, in 2008, had quietly filed a patent for a technology to embed solar cells under touch screens.
On Monday, CNET's Green Tech Blog reported on Patently Apple's discovery. In the opinion of the blog's editor, Martin LaMonica, the patent signifies that future iPhones and iPads could, with a little help from the sun, produce their own power. It does not, however, signify that we will all soon carry solar-powered mobile devices:
Standalone chargers for small electronics, including Apple gear, have been around for years. But embedding a solar cell into a device, with a power management system, is a far more challenging engineering job, and it's still not clear that can be done without adding significantly to a gadget's cost.
So, apparently, it's not quite time to get really excited about this.
Sorry for the tease.
