How can we make the next generation consumer electronic products truly portable? Do away when wires and batteries!

The vibration harvester is definitely pretty cool, and the power generating floor is also an amazing technology, moreover, I think it is possible to achieve the "true portability" by using the wireless charge technology from Intel, althought it is not mature, I can see its bright prospect of electrical recharge applications, especially the portalbe devices recharge.

While I was initially resistant to an integration of my mobile, pager, and palm pilot, I'd be lost today without my bberry.  In a sense, I think the promise of portable electronics is being realized.  Where once I had three devices, I now have one that wieghs less than the individual products.  One of the key reasons for considering an iPhone is that I could "integrate" my cell phone and iPod (music and pics)

Now if we could just use kinetic energy, ambient light, or low power EM fields to power this highly integrated, I'd have the ideal portable device.

To a certain extent, the industry may actually not want to get rid of batteries. I remember a time when they first began producing solar calculators. I had a good one which would just not die. It needed a faint amount of light to work and it continued to work after removing the light source. It was marketed as a dual energy source. If everyone owned one of those, they would never need to buy a replacement until it was lost or really abused.

If that technology was applied to our current generation efficient mobile phones and PDAs, we would save time and money on replacement batteries, chargers and phones.The retailers on the other hand would have a tougher problem pushing new products as the old ones will have a longer lifecycle.

There are technologies out there, but it's a matter of who genuinely wants to improve the product technology to benefit the consumer. Your thoughts?

Getting rid of the wires and the batteries would go a long way certainly in lengthening the lifetime of a product. A lot of products are replaced either because the cost of a replacement battery is prohibitive (greater than buying a replacement) or that the connection for charging etc has failed rendering it useless. I have a couple of items where the durability of the battery pack, for example a scientific calculator with an LED display with NiCd batteries which is still going strong, has more or less outlived its technology whereas I had a phone where both the battery charging socket and battery have failed.

There is some move to adopt charging by USB socket, which clears a lot of the problem about having a desk cluttered by a host of different chargers. One lead and charger would cover a multitude of devices and if the lead gets worn/damaged you can replace it. Wireless charging would be nice, but it'd have to be a lot more efficient or convienient. Trying to couple anything more than a few cm away isn't easy. I have some equipment with detachable batteries and a drop in charger that takes either the whole unit or the battery on its own - very convienient in my opinion.

That's good that people are able to get the loan and that opens up new chances.

I strongly agree with this post. Technology is as advance as one group is able to make money out of it. I've had those calculators and they won't EVER die. I always wonder why don't cell phones have the same technology. Granted, our cellphones do perform a greater number of task: transmitting data, voice (real time), accesing the web, the most important: IphoneApps Let's not forget about the fun, that's why people buy these devices, not so much for how useful they are but for how much cool (not so much useful) stuff they can do with it.

For a regular, boring, reliable cellphone, I think the same technology used in these calculators, could do well. But, who would buy such a cellphone?