Solar-powered case lets you charge your phone with light

Imagine having a phone that can stay charged by simply being exposed to light.

On Sunday, ahead of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Infinix showed me both a solar-powered, wireless charging case that can go on any phone as well as a phone with a mini solar panel built into its back side.

To demonstrate how it works, the Infinix representative merely pointed a (fairly strong) source of light to the phone's rear surface and the device started charging. Magic!

Via Giphy

Of course, to take advantage of the charging case, the phone would have to have wireless charging as there's no other connection from the case to the phone. The advantage of this is that the case, while perhaps not the prettiest out there, is simple, fairly thin, and easily placed on and removed from your device.

Infinix told me that the charging power maxes out at 2W, which means it'll take a couple of days to fully charge a typical phone. While it wasn't clear to me just how much light you need to charge the phone this way, Infinix told me that simply placing the phone face down out in the open on a sunny day should get you some power. This could be great news for adventurers, hikers, and folks who stay in the open without access to electricity for days at a time.

The solar case looks and operates like a regular case, and it isn't even particularly thick. Credit: Stan Schroeder / Mashable

If you thought this bit of news would be AI-free, you were wrong, as Infinix's tech uses artificial intelligence to find sources of light and store energy in an optimal way. For the solar bit, the company uses perovskite solar cells — the cool, new, highly efficient cells which everyone is playing with but they're not yet manufactured at large scale.

Right now, the Infinix solar-powered case and phone are just concepts, but the tech could trickle down into a real product down the line.