Viro : A Smartphone whose battery doesn’t Discharge, Everything You Wanted to Know

It’s time to share what was told to us by Francesco Rubino, the person who was in contact with us. We asked him a few questions, and here they are.

1. What kind of technologies are you going to use to make the phone generate enough power to run always without needing an external charger? We have been reading about three sources that the phone will be using. Explain?

Answer: It ‘s very simple, we integrated the following technologies:

1) Rear high efficiency solar panel of the second generation, which produces 0.41 Ampere at 5 Volt average in a sunny week.

2) solar film under the screen which produces 0.25 Ampere at 5 Volt. The technology of solar film is quite well known. There is already a smartphone that uses one to increase the battery life by 20%

1 + 2) The two systems are controlled by a chip manufactured by us, which stabilizes the voltage, and adjusts the operation to optimize the absorption and temperature. The production of this chip is based on SunBoost (initially we were going to use this chip), but has been improved and optimized for our smartphone. Most of our expenses are relative to produce this chip. In addition, both panels also absorb artificial light.

3) Solenoid 6cm placed at the bottom of the phone. The solenoid has a magnet inside it, which, moving creates a variation of the magnetic field, which in turn generates current. Initially, the shape of the solenoid and the absence of a Graetz bridge rectifier limited the amount of energy produced. After various studies, we have developed a solenoid carload. Is hard to explain to someone who is not an expert, but in simple terms we have used the current generated by the movement to strengthen the current itself through a circular magnetic field. The production of the solenoid depends on the frequency of the oscillations, the speed does not vary the energy produced but the voltage.

4) Solenoid 5CM positioned at the top of the phone. Is equal to 6 cm is shorter than a centimeter for the housing of the jack.

3 + 4) Both are connected to two rectifier Graetz bridge separated, which doubles the output energy. These are connected to the power chip and not directly to the battery.

5) Piezoelectric layers. They absorb energy from every mechanic movement, from walking to tapping on the screen. They can even absorb energy from the sound, but in a very limited quantity.

2. Are there going to be any serious limitations due to it?

Answer: No

3. You could have some decent specs and not chose the latest chipset and high-end specs, to see lesser battery consumption. Any reason behind that?

Answer: Actually the 810 consumption is smaller than the 801 thanks to the big.LITTLE

4. Is it just Android OS or Dual-boot with Android / Windows as we read it in a few comments.

Answer: Android is the primary OS, we are working on the secondary OS, but it’s hard.

5. What is the expected pricing, and would the Viro smartphone be available globally?

Answer: 699$, but first buyers will pay it 499$. Yes, global availability.

—

Update: It seems the story about Viro could be all fake. The website already had no much information, and it was only the Facebook page where we were getting the information. All of a sudden, the page disappears from the social network. We had signed an NDA, and we were given some detailed information about the smartphone, but the details we were given, won’t be out before October 1st. But that too doesn’t look anywhere near reality as the people behind this are not responding to the emails. We got to know about the disappearance of the Facebook page via comments, and tried to contact Viro team, but have got no replies.

The folks at IBTimes claim that it could just be a group of individuals trying to get funded, and the other possibility as mentioned in their comments, is that this could just be a social experiment. Seriously? we are still hoping something good comes out here.

—

How much ever powerful, beautiful or excellent a smartphone is, we always worry about the battery percentage, and keep wondering whether we would make it home before the battery goes dead. That is how super-bad our smartphone batteries have been always, except for a few devices. Viro, a new start-up is claiming to have come up with a concept of renewable energy, where they are going to use the renewable energy to make a smartphone whose battery never discharges. If this is true and if something like this comes out, wouldn’t that be revolutionary?

The Start-up is aiming to change the smartphone game on October 1st when the device will be announced, and whatever information is known for now, is already very much interesting and there is nothing kept at the low-end, if we talk about the hints given on the start-ups official Facebook page.

If we are to talk about the leaked details by the company, Viro smartphone is going to be powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor, the next gen SoC, which is yet to be released and that is what is going to delay the production of the device as the company set the release date for early 2015. Apart from the internal powering, the cameras are going to be no bad – a 20.7-megapixel rear shooter with Sony lens, and on the front, an 8-megapixel camera for the selfies.

The device will be waterproof and no opening flaps would be seen on the exterior of the phone. How much ever the start-up might try to impress the users with the external and internal specs, what is interesting here and what the consumers might be looking at, is the technology using which the smartphone will get charged by itself, needing no external source for charging at all.

Just as we write this, the startup has listed more details about the display: a 5.21-inch display with the Full HD resolution, giving the pixel density of 424 PPI. The display will have a Gorilla Glass 3 with Native Damage Resistance (NDR). One thing to notice while checking out the display information, is that the smartphone will have stuff that disables the GPU and thus, power consumption becomes lesser.

It is going to run the Android OS and there are three renewable energy sources that are going to keep this device charged, which is kind of the first time we are going to see no need of an external charger. Waterproofing without those annoying flaps is again going to raise some questions but we are sure Viro has something in pack with everything planned, as of what we are told. We are in touch with the team, and are being given some good details but everything would be out after October 1st, so stay tuned.