smartphone Related Articles

IntroductionNowadays, more and more mobile phones support NFC function. Of course, many people don’t know what NFC really is. Near-Field Communication (NFC) is a short-range wireless technology. NFC has functions of mobile payment, data transmission, information browsing and access control. It provides a simple, touch-sensitive solution to exchange information, access content and services simply and intuitively. At the same time, NFC has the characteristics of low cost, easy to use and more intuitive, which makes it more potential in certain fields.What is NFC? How NFC Works? Applications of NFCCatalogIntroductionⅠ What is NFC On Phone?Ⅱ NFC Application ModeⅢ NFC Operational ModeⅣ NFC Uses On PhoneⅤ Which Phones Have NFC?Ⅰ What is NFC On Phone?In theory, NFC is a set of protocols for communication between two electronic devices about four inches at the most. So you device have to be very close to another NFC enabled device to transfer the data or do payment, in other words, long distance or non NFC devices will not be able to operate normally. NFC evolved from the integration of radio-frequency identification (RFID) and interconnection technology. It combines inductive card readers, inductive cards and point-to-point functions on a chip, which can identify and exchange data with compatible devices within a short distance exchange. NFC was originally a simple merger of RFID technology and network technology in the pass, and now has evolved into a short-range wireless communication technology. With the popularity of smart phones, it develops rapidly.Like RFID, NFC information is also transmitted through electromagnetic induction coupling in the wireless frequency part of the spectrum, but there is still a big difference between the two. First of all, NFC is a wireless connection technology that provides easy, safe, and rapid communication experience. Its transmission range is smaller than that of RFID, because RFID can support several meters or even tens of meters. What’s more, due to the unique signal attenuation technology adopted by NFC, NFC has the characteristics of short distance, high bandwidth, and low energy consumption.With NFC mobile phones, people can get the services and transactions at any place in any time. In short, through NFC-supported devices, people can complete payment or transfer data.Ⅱ NFC Application ModeNFC devices can be used as contactless smart cards, write/read terminals, and device-to-device data transmission paths. It has a wide range of applications, which can be divided into three basic types:Close→Finish. For applications such as access control or traffic/event ticket checking, users only need to bring the device storing the ticket or access code close to the reader. It can also be used for simple data capture applications, such as reading URLs from smart tags on posters.Close→Confirm. In applications such as mobile payment, the user must enter a password to confirm the transaction, or only accept the transaction.Close→Connect. By linking two NFC-enabled devices, you can perform point-to-point network data transmission, such as downloading music, exchanging images, or synchronizing address books.NFC devices may provide more than one function. Consumers can explore and understand the functions of the device and find out the potential functions and services of the NFC device. Ⅲ NFC Operational ModeNFC uses two-way recognition and connection. Its working modes include card emulation, P2P mode and reader/writer mode. Both NFC and Bluetooth are short-range communication technologies, and are integrated into mobile phones. NFC does not require complicated setup procedures, and it can also simplify Bluetooth connections. The advantage of NFC is that its setup procedure is shorter, but it cannot reach the low power compared with Bluetooth. The maximum data transfer capacity of NFC is 424 kbit/s, which is much smaller than Bluetooth V2.1 (2.1 Mbit/s). Although NFC is inferior to Bluetooth in transmission speed and distance, it does not require a power source. For mobile phones or portable electronic products, NFC is more convenient to use.NFC is superior to infrared(IR) transmission and Bluetooth. As a consumer-oriented transaction mechanism, NFC is faster, more reliable and much simpler than IR, which requires strict alignment to transmit data. Compared with Bluetooth, NFC is not suitable for long-distance data communication and. So NFC and Bluetooth complement each other and coexist. In fact, NFC protocol can be used to improve the Bluetooth pairing process between two devices.Ⅳ NFC Uses On PhoneAs a bus and subway card. we all know that most of our bills can be paid by mobile phones, but we often face a problem, that is, forgetting to bring the card or change. Now we have an NFC-enabled mobile phone to reduce embarrassing situations. Turn on the local subway and bus functions on the mobile phone, so that we can use the mobile phone to pay. To put it simply, the NFC function can turn your mobile phone into a bus card, you can also recharge the bus card online, and you can read the card data to check the balance, etc. At present, the most widely used field of NFC is also in bus/subway card.As a door-access card. It’s really troublesome to forget to bring the access card, but now we don’t have to worry, because the NFC function of the mobile phone can also be used directly as the access card to enter the door. We only need to click the virtual key in the mobile phone, and then place access card on the back of the mobile phone for data reading. After reading the relevant information, we can directly use the mobile phone’s NFC to act as the access card.Read the bank card information directly. For example, we usually need to check the consumption records of our bank card. We need to download the bank’s official software to be able to check or go to the bank. If the mobile phone has the NFC function, we can get the bank card information according to the relevant operation, like the bank card’s consumption records and balances, which is very convenient for us.Bluetooth speakers connected to NFC, there are many Bluetooth speakers on the market that are also equipped with NFC function. When we connect, we only need to use a mobile phone that supports NFC function to turn on the Bluetooth speaker, which is more than we need to set up Bluetooth before. Pairing connection is much more convenient.File transfer, although we can use the network to transfer files now, the speed is very fast, but if the mobile phone does not have a network, the NFC function is more important, only need to use the NFC function of the two mobile phones Open and paste together, we can transfer music, pictures or files, which is still very useful. Of course, now the same brand of mobile phones also have their own fast data transmission function, and no network is required.The above are some practical small functions that NFC can bring in mobile phones, which is still very practical for our lives. Of course, there are more other similar functions, we can stack them according to the actual situation.Ⅴ Which Phones Have NFC?The following smartphone models are all from the official website data, but there will be gaps in different regions, and all local models shall prevail.HuaweiSamsungMate X2, Mate XS, Mate X, Mate 40 RS, Mate 40 Pro+, Mate 40 Pro, Mate 40, Mate 40E, Mate 30, Mate 30 RS, Mate 30 Pro, Mate 30 Pro 5G, Mate 30 5G, Mate 20, Mate 20 RS, Mate 20 X 5G, Mate 20 X, Mate 20 Pro, Mate 10, Mate 10 Pro, Mate 9, Mate 9 Pro, Mate 8, Mate 7, Mate SW21, W20Z Fold2, Z FlipJ7 Pro, J7+, J7(2016), J5, J4, J3C9 Pro, C7 Pro, C7, C5 Pro, C5GRAND Prime, MEGA2, ALPHA G8508S, CORE Lite 4G, CORE AdvanceP40 Pro+, P40 Pro, P40, P30 Pro, P30, P20 Pro, P20, P10 Plus, P10Note20 Ultra, Note20, Note10+ 5G, Note10+, Note10, Note10 Lite, Note9, Note8, Note7, Note5, Note4, Note3nova 8 Pro, nova 8, nova 7 Pro, nova 7, nova 6, nova 5 Pro, nova 2sA90, A80, A71 5G, A71, A70, A60, A51, A50s, A31, A21s, A20, A9 Star Lite, A9, A8S, A8+, A8S21 Ultra, S21+, S21, S20 Ultra, S20+, S20, S10 5G, S10+, S9+, S9, S8+, S8 OnePlusMicrosoft LumiaOnePlus 8 Pro, OnePlus 7 Pro, OnePlus 7, OnePlus 6, OnePlus 5, OnePlus 3, OnePlus 1,OnePlus 8T, OnePlus 7T Pro, OnePlus 7T, OnePlus 6T, OnePlus 5T, OnePlus 3TLumia 950 XL, Lumia 950, Lumia 930, Lumia 925, Lumia 920, Lumia 650, Lumia 640 XL, Lumia 640 Apple IphoneSony Xperiaiphone 12 Pro, iphone 12, iphone 12 mini, iphone 11 Pro Max, iphone 11 Pro, iphone 11iphone XS Max, iphone XS, iphone XR, iphone Xiphone 8 Plus, iphone 8, iphone 7 Plus, iphone 7, iphone 6s Plus, iphone 6s, iphone 6 Plus, iphone 6iphone SE 2, iphone SEXperia 1, Xperia XZs, Xperia XZ2 Compact, Xperia XZ2 Premium, Xperia XZ2, Xperia XZ Premium, Xperia XZXperia XA2 Ultra, Xperia XA1 Ultra, Xperia XA1 Plus, Xperia XA1, Xperia X CompactLT29i, LT26i, MT27i, Xperia L1, Xperia E5 HTCLGHTC U UltraHTC Desire 21 Pro, HTC Desire 20+, HTC Desire 20 Pro, HTC Desire 19S, HTC Desire 19+, HTC Desire 12S, HTC Desire 626HTC U20 5G, HTC U12 Life, HTC U12+, HTC U11+, HTC U11, HTC U11 EYEsHTC 10 lifestyle, HTC 10New HTC One, HTC One E9+, HTC One M9, HTC One M8LG G7fitLG G7+ ThinQ, LG G7 ThinQ, LG G5, LG G4, LG G3, LG G2LG Q Stylus+, Q6+, Q6LG V40 ThinQ, LG V35 ThinQ, LG V30+, LG V30, LG V20, LG V10LG Stylus 3, LG Stylus 2+LG AKA RealmeZTERealme GT, Realme X50m, Realme X50 Pro, Realme X50, Realme X2 Pro, Realme X2ZTE Axon 7s, Axon 20 5G, Axon 11 5G, Axon 10 Pro 5G, Axon 10 Pro, ZTE T900, ZTE A602NubiaBlackBerryZ17 S, Z17, Z11, Z9 Max, Z9, Z7 Max, Z17 mini, Z5 mini, Z5S(LET)keyone, 9900, 9810(4G) Frequently Asked Questions about NFC Technology1. What is NFC technology?Near-Field Communication (NFC) is a set of communication protocols for communication between two electronic devices over a distance of 4 cm (11⁄2 in) or less. NFC offers a low-speed connection with simple setup that can be used to bootstrap more-capable wireless connections. It is a contact-less communication technology based on a radio frequency (RF) field. 2. How does near field communication NFC work?Near-field communication transmits data through electromagnetic radio fields to enable two devices to communicate with each other. To work, both devices must contain NFC chips, as transactions take place within a very short distance. 3. Do all mobile phones have NFC?All the latest Android smartphones can scan NFC without an app but there are a few older models that do not support NFC. 4. Is RFID same as NFC?The short answer: RFID stands for Radio Frequency Identification, a one-way communication method at varying distances. NFC, or Near Field Communication, is a version that allows for two-way communication. NFC is not totally contactless, typically requiring devices to be within a few inches of each other. 5. What is NFC vs Bluetooth?NFC is great for transferring small amounts of data over a very short distance and is used mostly for wireless payments and access cards. Bluetooth allows for a more extended range of connectivity and devices such as cellphones, speakers, and headphones commonly use it.

When you hear the word battery, what do you think? Those annoying pink Duracell rabbits, the ones you have stolen from the back of the remote control or the fact that your phone’s battery may as well cease to exist because nowadays it barely lasts all of five minutes? It is a common fear in most of us, that whilst we are out having a good time your phone’s battery is quickly fading in your pocket. However, we never seem worried about the battery’s eventual lifespan, which for the record is normally between three and five years. There are in fact ways to keep your battery in pristine condition for a long and powerful life; even though batteries do not enjoy eternal life. Many smartphone manufacturers insist that devices rate batteries at 300-500 cycles, which isn’t necessarily good news for us. Apple claims that its laptop batteries reach 80% of their original capacity after just 1,000 charges. After this point batteries aren’t able to hold as much electricity and will power your device for increasingly shorter periods of time. Whilst you taken on all this negative battery news fear not; let’s take a look at some tips to extend your battery’s lifespan, whether that is an iPhone, Android phone, Windows phone, tablet, or laptop. Let’s start with something that is on everyone’s minds – the big question; when re-charging a battery should you let it run to zero before charging full to 100%? One reason why people are unsure is something they’ve heard of called the battery ‘memory effect’. What is battery memory effect?Battery memory effect is about batteries remembering remaining charge if you don’t let them go all the way to zero too often. So a battery frequently charged from 20-80% might ‘forget’ about the 40% that’s left uncharged (0-20% and 80-100%). Sounds like a bit of an old wives tale? Well it sort of is true, but only for older nickel-based (NiMH and NiCd) batteries, not the lithium-ion batteries in your phones now. Fortunately for us, Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries don’t suffer the memory effect so you basically what is best for them is the total opposite; charge them often but not all the way throughout the day, and don’t let them drop to zero. Don’t charge your phone battery from zero to 100%The golden rule with Li-ion batteries is to keep them 50% or more most of the time, so when it drops below 50% if you can just top it up a little bit. ‘Little and often’ as they say a few times a day seems to be the optimum to aim for. But ideally don’t charge it all the way to 100%. It won’t be fatal to your battery if you do fully recharge, I mean most of us are forced to do this every now and again in an emergency, but constantly doing a full recharge will shorten the battery’s lifespan. So a good range to aim for when charging a Li-ion battery is from about 40-80% in one go. Try not to let the battery drop below 20%. When should I do a full battery charge?Experts recommend that you do a full zero to 100% battery recharge, or as they call it a ‘charge cycle’ maybe once a month only. This is so the battery can recalibrate - a bit like restarting your computer, or, for humans, going on holiday and relaxing. Another top tip; the same rule applies to laptops. Should I charge my phone overnight?Most modern smartphones are clever enough to stop charging when full, so there isn't a great risk in leaving your phone charging overnight. However some experts have recommended you remove the phone from a case if charging for a long time, as a case could lead to over-heating. This is what Lithium-ion batteries do not like. Should I use fast battery charging?Many Android phones have a feature that allows for fast charging, often referred to as Qualcomm Quick Charge or, in Samsung's case, Adaptive Fast Charging. These phones have special code usually located in a chip known as the Power Management IC (PMIC) that communicates with the charger you are using and requests that it send power at a higher voltage. However, unfortunately for the Apple lovers out there, the iPhone 6 doesn’t feature fast charging, but its Qualcomm PMIC is smart enough to recognise when you use a higher-amp charger (like the one you get with the iPad), which is a good thing because fast charging will heat up that Li-ion battery and cause it increased wear and tear. For this exact reason, phones shouldn’t be left in a hot car, on the beach or next to the oven. Overheating the battery will suffer long-term effects on its lifespan and on the other hand so will a super-cold one, so don’t leave your device in the freezer or out in the snow. If you can, switch off fast charging on your Android phone. Can I use any charger?It is best to use your charger, so where possible use the charger that came with your phone, as it is sure to have the correct rating. Or make sure that a third-party charger is approved by your phone's manufacturer. Cheap alternatives from Amazon or eBay may harm your phone, and there have been several reported cases of cheap chargers actually catching on fire. Storing battery tipsDon’t leave a Li-ion battery li-ing around too long at 0%. Try to leave it at around 40-50%. These batteries drain at about 5-10% a month when not in use. So if you let your battery discharge completely and leave it uncharged for a long period of time it may eventually become incapable of holding a charge at all – RIP it’s officially dead. It’s unlikely you’ll leave your smartphone lying in a drawer for very long, but think about laptops, battery packs or spare batteries that are unused for long periods of time. So try to keep them all at least half charged. Ref.ML-621S/ZTNML-614S/FN

It has been said that spending too much time on a smartphone can negatively impact brain development or even cause damage to the neck. But don't toss yours in the bin just yet. An EU-funded project is working on smartphones' health cred by developing 'Sniffphone' - a module capable of analysing the user's breath to detect as many as 17 diseases.  Adding sensors to smartphones has been a trend lately, with the newest models being able to detect changes in the likes of temperature, humidity, hand gestures or light. But there is one thing these devices can still not do at this point: analyse our breath. Although portable devices have already been commercialised to detect blood alcohol levels and display it on smartphones, using breath analysis technology to its full potential would be a killer feature for both smartphone manufacturers and app developers.A technology called 'Na-Nose' could well be the long-sought-after Holy Grail. Presented in a study published on ACS Nano in December 2016, the device can detect the chemical patterns of exhaled volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in patients' breath. The new study does not only demonstrate for the first time that specific diseases can be linked to such chemical patterns, but it also shows how Na-Nose can rely on gold nanoparticles and carbon nanotubes to diagnose as many as 17 different diseases including early stage forms of some cancers.Na-Nose's story began 10 years ago when engineer Hossam Haick joined Technion Israel's Institute of Technology. There, he started developing a screening tool made up of two parts: a desktop box with a tube into which a person exhales, sending his or her breath into an array of sensors; and an attached computer equipped with machine-learning software and trained to recognise patterns from those sensors.The array's thin layers of gold nanoparticles or carbon nanotubes are coated with organic ligands. When exhaled VOCs bind to these ligands, the electrical resistance between the nanoparticles or nanotubes is changed. The resulting signal is sent to a computer which uses a pattern-recognition software to determine whether the signal matches that of a particular disease.The device was trained to recognise over 23 illnesses, after which Haick's team tested it on over 8 000 patients to teach the software how to discriminate between disease and confounding factors, such as contamination, age, gender, background disease and geography. Last year, Haick already demonstrated that the resulting tool could detect gastric cancer in a blinded test of patients with 92-94 % accuracy. But with this new study, he took things even further by using Na-Nose to detect and discriminate among 17 different diseases in the breath of 1 404 individuals across five countries.The next step now consists in miniaturising the device enough to be able to bring it onto smartphones by August 2018, thanks to funding under Horizon 2020's SNIFFPHONE project. 'We aim to catch disease at an early stage, where we can increase the survival rate,' says Haick.Reference:10027941005447-11005935-1 

Researchers have developed a prototype of a next-generation lithium-sulphur battery which takes its inspiration in part from the cells lining the human intestine. The batteries, if commercially developed, would have five times the energy density of the lithium-ion batteries used in smartphones and other electronics.The new design, by researchers from the University of Cambridge, overcomes one of the key technical problems hindering the commercial development of lithium-sulphur batteries, by preventing the degradation of the battery caused by the loss of material within it. The results are reported in the journal Advanced Functional Materials.Working with collaborators at the Beijing Institute of Technology, the Cambridge researchers based in Dr Vasant Kumar's team in the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy developed and tested a lightweight nanostructured material which resembles villi, the finger-like protrusions which line the small intestine. In the human body, villi are used to absorb the products of digestion and increase the surface area over which this process can take place.In the new lithium-sulphur battery, a layer of material with a villi-like structure, made from tiny zinc oxide wires, is placed on the surface of one of the battery's electrodes. This can trap fragments of the active material when they break off, keeping them electrochemically accessible and allowing the material to be reused."It's a tiny thing, this layer, but it's important," said study co-author Dr Paul Coxon from Cambridge's Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy. "This gets us a long way through the bottleneck which is preventing the development of better batteries."A typical lithium-ion battery is made of three separate components: an anode (negative electrode), a cathode (positive electrode) and an electrolyte in the middle. The most common materials for the anode and cathode are graphite and lithium cobalt oxide respectively, which both have layered structures. Positively-charged lithium ions move back and forth from the cathode, through the electrolyte and into the anode.The crystal structure of the electrode materials determines how much energy can be squeezed into the battery. For example, due to the atomic structure of carbon, each carbon atom can take on six lithium ions, limiting the maximum capacity of the battery.Sulphur and lithium react differently, via a multi-electron transfer mechanism meaning that elemental sulphur can offer a much higher theoretical capacity, resulting in a lithium-sulphur battery with much higher energy density. However, when the battery discharges, the lithium and sulphur interact and the ring-like sulphur molecules transform into chain-like structures, known as a poly-sulphides. As the battery undergoes several charge-discharge cycles, bits of the poly-sulphide can go into the electrolyte, so that over time the battery gradually loses active material.The Cambridge researchers have created a functional layer which lies on top of the cathode and fixes the active material to a conductive framework so the active material can be reused. The layer is made up of tiny, one-dimensional zinc oxide nanowires grown on a scaffold. The concept was trialled using commercially-available nickel foam for support. After successful results, the foam was replaced by a lightweight carbon fibre mat to reduce the battery's overall weight."Changing from stiff nickel foam to flexible carbon fibre mat makes the layer mimic the way small intestine works even further," said study co-author Dr Yingjun Liu.This functional layer, like the intestinal villi it resembles, has a very high surface area. The material has a very strong chemical bond with the poly-sulphides, allowing the active material to be used for longer, greatly increasing the lifespan of the battery."This is the first time a chemically functional layer with a well-organised nano-architecture has been proposed to trap and reuse the dissolved active materials during battery charging and discharging," said the study's lead author Teng Zhao, a PhD student from the Department of Materials Science & Metallurgy. "By taking our inspiration from the natural world, we were able to come up with a solution that we hope will accelerate the development of next-generation batteries."For the time being, the device is a proof of principle, so commercially-available lithium-sulphur batteries are still some years away. Additionally, while the number of times the battery can be charged and discharged has been improved, it is still not able to go through as many charge cycles as a lithium-ion battery. However, since a lithium-sulphur battery does not need to be charged as often as a lithium-ion battery, it may be the case that the increase in energy density cancels out the lower total number of charge-discharge cycles."This is a way of getting around one of those awkward little problems that affects all of us," said Coxon. "We're all tied in to our electronic devices - ultimately, we're just trying to make those devices work better, hopefully making our lives a little bit nicer."Reference:KY605-ML-621S/ZTNKY605-MS412FE-FL26EKY605-MS518SE-FL35E

Stream video on your smartphone, or use its GPS for an hour or two, and you'll probably see the battery drain significantly. As data rates climb and smartphones adopt more power-hungry features, battery life has become a concern. Now a technology developed by MIT spinout Eta Devices could help a phone's battery last perhaps twice as long, and help to conserve energy in cell towers.The primary culprit in smartphone battery drain is an inefficient power amplifier, a component that is designed to push the radio signal out through the phones' antennas. Similar larger modules are found in wireless base stations, where they might use 10 or even 100 times the power.Prepared to send sizeable chunks of data at any given time, the amplifiers stay at maximum voltage, eating away power—more than any other smartphone component, and about 75 percent of electricity consumption in base stations—and wasting more than half of that power as heat. This means smartphone batteries lose longevity, and base stations waste energy and lose money.But Eta Devices has developed a chip (for smartphones) and a shoebox-size module (for base stations)—based on nearly a decade of MIT research—to essentially "switch gears" to adjust voltage supply to power amplifiers as needed, cutting the waste."You can look at our technology as a high-speed gearbox that, every few nanoseconds, modulates the amount of power that the power amplifier draws from the battery," explains Joel Dawson, Eta Devices' chief technology officer and a former associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science who co-invented the technology. "That turns out to be the key to keeping the efficiency very high."When trialed in a base station last year, Eta Devices' module became the first transmitter for 4G LTE networks to achieve an average efficiency greater than 70 percent, Dawson says. "The highest number we've heard before that was 45 percent—and that's probably being generous," he says.Backed by millions in funding, Eta Devices—co-founded by David Perreault, an MIT professor of electrical engineering, and former MIT Sloan fellow Mattias Astrom—has partnered with a large base-station manufacturer. The goal is to deploy the technology in live base stations by the end of 2015. The savings could be substantial, Dawson says, noting that a large carrier could save $100 million in annual electricity costs.Eta Devices has also entered conversations with major manufacturers of LTE-enabled smartphones to incorporate their chips by the end of next year. Dawson says this could potentially double current smartphone battery life.Besides battery life, Dawson adds, there are many ways the telecommunications industry can take advantage of improved efficiency. Eta Devices' approach could lead to smaller handset batteries, for example, and even smaller handsets, since there would be less dissipating heat. The technology could also drive down operating costs for base stations in the developing world, where these stations rely on expensive diesel fuel for power.And ultimately, it could impact the environment: If all midsized carrier networks were to replace current radio amplifiers with Eta Devices' technology, he says, the reduction in greenhouse gases would be equivalent to taking about 5 million cars off the road. "There are so many ways to leverage high efficiency if you have it," Dawson says.In August, the World Economic Forum named Eta Devices the 2015 Technology Pioneer, a designation awarded previously to Dropbox, Spotify, and Twitter, to name a few.In the mobile marketEta Devices' commercial success is, in part, a product of engineering ingenuity intersecting with business acumen at MIT.In 2008, Dawson and Perreault, who directs the Power Electronics Research Group, submitted an early concept of the Eta technology—then called asymmetrical multilevel outphasing (AMO)—to an Innovation Teams (i-Teams) class that brought together MIT students from across disciplines to develop commercial products.The AMO technology was a new transmitter architecture, where algorithms could choose from different voltages needed to transmit data in each power amplifier, and select the optimal choice for power conservation—and do so roughly 20 million times per second. This could be done on the transmitting and receiving end of data transfers.This caught the eye of Astrom, who had come to MIT after working in the mobile industry for 10 years, "looking for the next big thing." With help from Astrom, the professors started designing the technology for the mobile market—initially leaning toward base stations."At the time, I was suffering, as everyone else was, from my iPhone running out of battery at lunchtime," Astrom says. "The iPhone was only a year old, but you could see how much data traffic would explode."Fleshing out a business plan from an i-Teams draft, the two professors earned a Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation grant in 2009, allowing for the first demonstration of the hardware, showing a 77 percent gain in efficiency over standard systems. (A paper detailing the technology was presented at that year's IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium.)"That Deshpande Center grant was big in terms of the funding and connecting us with local venture capitalists, and really helping with being in that business mindset," Dawson says.Spinning out a company has been the best way to validate the technology—especially with novel power-electronics hardware, Dawson says. "People in our industry take ideas a lot more seriously when there's a company behind it," he says. "We had impressive performance at MIT, but now we have a team of professionals working on the technology full-time. The resulting performance numbers are jaw-dropping. Now people are going back and frantically studying the original MIT research papers."Luckily, Dawson says, several significant changes were made to those old research projects in order to develop today's ETAdvanced—so the secret ingredients of the technology are safe. "The joke I like to tell is: When I was a professor, I was going around the world trying to give the technology away," Dawson says, laughing. "If I had succeeded, then there'd be no business."Future-proofing technologyToday, Eta Devices' major advantage is that its technology is able to handle ever-increasing data bandwidths.A few major smartphone manufacturers are now using envelope tracking (ET), which adjusts voltage to power amplifiers on the fly. But by adjusting that voltage continuously, ET efficiency falls apart for 4G/LTE and 802.11ac (WiFi) wireless standards, even up to 20 MHz bandwidth. ETAdvanced, in contrast, already accommodates ultrahigh bandwidths used by newer communication standards, such as LTE Advanced (up to 80 megahertz), and the next-generation WiFi standard (up to 160 megahertz).Prepping for future communication standards is one thing that's helped the company thrive, Dawson says. "As a small company, you'll lose a fair fight with another technology—you have to have some overpowering advantage that they can't match you on," he says. "In introducing new hardware, you not only have to be better than the product of today, but also have to make compelling case for being future-proof."