Last week Nokia displayed a fuel cell-powered Bluetooth headset, which is now undergoing user trials (see the last slide in Yrjö Neuvo’s presentation). Sure, the increase in battery life is a major incremental improvement. However, in his blog Christian Lindholm suggests the replacement of the solid battery with a fluid tank may trigger radical innovation in the design of mobile electronics by enabling form factors that have previously been possible only in sci-fi movies. “Liquid is esentially free from form and will thus enable us to make radically different electronics. It will stimulate an era of organically shaped electronics,” he predicts. I agree. What’s exciting about fuel cells is not their capacity as a power source, it’s their potency to catalyze a new design paradigm.

Comments are closed for this post.