Nikola Labs to release iPhone 6 case that charges your phone from the air

We’ve all been there, either just before setting off to work, or heading out of the door for a night out, when we grab our phones, only to find them nearly entirely barren of energy.

It’s a colossal problem that’s been plaguing mobile phone users for the past ten years or so.

But now, there seems to be a solution on the horizon, because Ohio-based start-up company, Nikola Labs, is currently working on a phone case that will actually charge your phone from thin air.

Gaining charge from radio frequency signals, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and LTE, the charger converts the signals into energy that your phone can use.

Writing on its blog, the company said:

Nikola Technology efficiently converts RF signals like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and LTE into DC power using its proprietary energy harvesting circuit. The result is usable energy that can provide power to mobile devices wirelessly.”

Using an antenna within the case itself, the signals are harvested and then fed into an RF-DC converter, and can prolong the battery life of an iPhone 6 by up to 30 per cent – which is a pretty interesting thing to do with the air.

Although the technology was originally developed at the Ohio State University, the project was transferred to the start-up company, which now owns the licensing and patents for the technology. According to the Nikola Labs, alongside a great many other innovations, the case will be available on crowd-funding site, Kickstarter, and will be sold for around $99.

It has not yet stated whether the product will go on sale in the UK, although it has said that it hopes to begin shipping within the next four months – with store availability coming into play around 2016.

Alongside the likes of Project Ara, which is due for release later in the year, it is highly likely that new mobile technology shall be created and sold not by corporation giants in the future, such as Samsung and Apple, but via a plethora of trusted independent manufacturers around the world.

It is also something that internet retailers are taking an interest in.

Online retailer, The Smart Phone Company spoke to us, saying that:

The mobile market has changed so much within the past five years and we’re really excited to see where the next five years will take us. We’re getting to a point where we won’t have to rely on the big mobile brands anymore and we think that will be a really good thing. An open market place will be a brilliant place to be for those that can provide people with the technology that they need.”