Battery-free gadgets: OPPO wants us to stop charging things and has a plan to achieve it

OPPO has declared war on batteries. Through a report carried out by its research division, the smartphone and device brand shows its plan to promote what they have called ‘Zero-Power’ technology.

The idea is seemingly as simple as it is promising, while involving profound changes in the way devices are powered. Instead of storing energy in a battery and constantly charging them, the goal is to obtain energy directly from wireless sources., be it radio waves, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or any other technology that is currently used to send information, but can also be used to channel energy in a fluid way.

Manufacturers start to think of batteries as a limiting factor

OPPO’s roadmap shows that several charging technologies could coexist in the coming years. According to the company, in the near future IoT devices will be able to charge via wireless signals. This will lead to smaller devices, with more autonomy and a lower cost, due to the savings that dispensing with batteries will mean.

The ‘Zero-Power Communication’ technology is based on ambient radiofrequency charging. With current networks it is possible to do it through RFID, but OPPO explains that “current technology has problems such as short communication distances, low efficiency or limited capacity of systems.” When could it be available? According to the Chinese company, this radiofrequency charging could be one of the advances of the next generation 6G, expected in the next 3 to 5 years.

In the following paragraph, OPPO explains what it intends to achieve:

“Unlike the traditional method, Zero-Power devices can collect environmental radio signals emitted from points such as TV towers, FM radio towers, cellular base stations, and WiFi access points (APs) as their power source. After collecting the energy of existing radio waves, the device can modulate environmental radio signals with its own information and transmit these signals outwards in a process known as backscattering.When designing Zero-Power Communication networks it will be necessary to consider their coexistence with currently existing 4G/5G communication systems”.

To demonstrate its technology, OPPO has already built several functional concepts and its next step is promote this technology as a telecommunications standard.

OPPO is not the only company to bet on remote wireless charging. Last year Xiaomi showed Mi Air Charge, with a charge for several devices at “several meters” with a power of 5W. Another recent bet is that of Samsung. And in this case in a real product. Your remote control for televisions in 2022 is charged by radio frequency.

More ambitious is the Powerfoyle technology from the Swedish company Exeger. It is a material that can capture sunlight and convert it into energy. As we can see, remote wireless charging is very plausible, which is still far from being commercially available and widely available. Nevertheless, companies like OPPO firmly believe in its possibilities and warn that the future of gadgets can happen here.

More information | OPPO