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Nokia has taken another giant step with the discovery of a cell phone that recharges itself employing a unique system : It crops ambient radio waves from the air, and turns that energy into serviceable power.

While “traditional”  wireless power systems are especially designed with a transmitter and receiver to mind, Nokia’s system isn’t finicky about where it becomes its wireless waves. Television , radio, other mobile phone systems — all of this stuff just rebounds round the air and most of it actually is wasted, soaked up into the environment or scattered into the ether.

Nokia picks up all of the bits and bobs of these waves and uses the collected electromagnetic energy to make electric current, then uses that to recharge the phone’s battery.

A massive range of frequencies can be used by the system. It is the same concept that Tesla was exploring a hundred years back, just on a small scale. Cropping ambient electromagnetic energy isn’t going to supply enough electricity to power your full house or office, but it just could be enough to keep a cell phone alive and kicking.

Nokia is in a position to crop all of five milliwatts from the air ; the goal is to extend that to twenty milliwatts in the near term and fifty milliwatts down the road. That would not be enough to keep the phone alive in an active call, but would be adequate to slowly recharge the cell phone battery even though it’s in standby mode, allegedly offering infinite power — provided you are not stuck deep underground where radio waves can’t penetrate.

Nokia claims that they are going to exploit commercially the technology in 3 to 5 years.