Nokia looks beyond fuel cells for energy

By Tarmo Virki

HELSINKI (Reuters) - The mobile industry needs to focus more on power usage to keep today's sophisticated devices playing video and music for longer, a Nokia executive told Reuters in an interview.

The way cellphones use energy has changed dramatically since the introduction of technologies like streaming video and high-resolution displays, which consume a lot more power.

Nokia says software developers need to focus more on making their programmes use less energy. At the same time, the world's biggest handset maker is looking into alternatives to the lithium-ion batteries that power cellphones today.

"The phone needs to do a better job," Nokia's Chief Technology Officer Bob Iannucci told Reuters, adding that fuel cells, long touted as the future option for small handhelds such as netbooks, may not be the answer for cellphones.

"There are obvious problems with fuel cells," he said, which create electricity using a methanol and water source.

"We are more interested in tracking things like super-capacitors based on nanotechnologies," Iannucci said. Super-capacitors store energy in an electric field, not chemically like current lithium-ion batteries.

For fuel cells to be widely used to power handsets, a global distribution network would need to be built for the methanol needed to feed the cells, and also the power capacity of tiny fuel cells would need to increase drastically, he said.

"You have to have a battery or capacitor in addition to the fuel cell, which takes away space from the fuel cell. Then you start to ask the question: why bother with the fuel cell?" Iannucci said.

"The distribution thing will kill that equation."