Solar powered ipods/iphones in the future?

Solar powered ipods/iphones in the future?
Apple Wins their First Solar Powered Patent for Portables - Patently Apple

It would be a much welcomed feature for me. I'm not always at a convenient location that provides electricity. Solar power would be a great supplemental power source when we can't find an outlet or as a way to prolong the battery usage when we're outside.

You only mentioned iPhone/iPods but the article also talks about laptops which is where I'm more interested in.

It's going to need to be an efficient power supply, but I do like the idea. Should make iPods last even longer (actual product life).
I see that Logitech now have a solar powered keyboard, which is kind of interesting, but not sure how well it'll work in an office environment. If I had one where my Mac is, it would struggle.

Kevriano said:

I see that Logitech now have a solar powered keyboard, which is kind of interesting, but not sure how well it'll work in an office environment. If I had one where my Mac is, it would struggle.

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It depends on how much energy it needs. Indoor lighting can provide enough power for low energy devices. Remember solar powered calculators? They worked perfectly fine indoors.

Of course this won't work for laptops and most likely not iPhones/iPods either. Solar power technology has come along way but it's probably still not advanced enough to get a great deal of energy from indoor lighting.

I'm also thinking about this technology in a broader topic because if smaller solar panel become efficient enough then this could completely revolutionize our chore of recharging. We might not have to ever plug our portable devices into an outlet power source again.

Yes agreed, and of course the calculators needed little power.
The keyboard is a beast, but Logitech claim it's fine in indoor lighting, which I guss it must be, otherwise it would be useless!

http://www.logitech.com/en-us/keyboards/keyboard/devices/k750-keyboard

You can buy cases for iPods that are solar powered.

I'd love to see this added. Even just gaining 20-30 minutes of use time per day would be phenomenal.