"Prototype Nokia phone recharges without wires"

What's on the scope is pick up from a man sized antenna with respect to ground. A phone doesn't have space for a man sized antenna or any ground to work against.

Yeah - everybody knows they poke holes in the biosphere. ;-P

Cheers! Rich

in sunny climes, even when insolation is a fraction of

And in the areas where it isn't, you don't want to hang around!

Does your opinion make a hen's shit of difference in the world, Jack?

The idea of capturing stray airwaves is a good one, even if it is only a marketing ploy.

In the same way that capturing stray flammable gasses from the atmosphere is a good idea?

Maybe we could save the world by using fart powered fuel cells to help charge phone batteries. Capturing some greenhouse gas at source it would be a double win.

it's been done.

somehow it hasn't taken off although it isn't dead.

...Methanol-powered micro fuel cells are racing toward market... That was November 2001

I can vividly imagine a cell phone with "fart gas" nozzle, just racing toward mass market adoption.

Have they? What'd they do?

No. It is snake oil, and no retarded marketing ploy is good. What do you think is partly to blame for the erosion of this country's economy?

Do the math. RF "Airwaves" equals femtowatts, at best, perhaps a bit more near the transmitter. So it would take a LONG time or a LOT of signals (multiple tuners?) to even equal the energy needed to pump the battery charge circuit in the unit.

Do the math EM energy falls off at a rate of the square of the distance. That is how flux density degrades through space. Each flux line is the square of the distance away from the previous set. So too goes the power.

So putting the coil right next to an "source coil", as is the case with say, the electric toothbrushes that have no charging pins in the charging stand does work.

Putting the coil several feet away, makes for very little useable energy. Even less with unstructured sources like the house wiring suggestion, less still with rf feeds.

So to the trained person, the idea sucks because it misleads the obvious lay persons, like yourself, it seems.

That would be great for the 'Global Warming' crowd.