Infinix’s new concepts use solar power to charge your phone

1 week ago 10

Allison Johnson is a reviewer with 10 years of experience writing about consumer tech. She has a special interest in mobile photography and telecom. Previously, she worked at DPReview.

Chinese phone brand Infinix is known to show off a flashy concept, and at this year’s MWC the company is looking skyward for inspiration. It’s showing a phone with an integrated solar panel on the back, as well as a solar charging phone case. They’re both in the concept phase, but the demo units I saw at MWC were functional and the idea is plenty appealing.

Infinix calls this SolarEnergy-Reserving technology, and it uses perovskite solar cells like Anker’s beach umbrella and cloak concept. These cells are thinner and cheaper to produce than traditional silicon solar cells. That’s paired with a system that helps regulate voltage called Maximum Power Point Tracking. The idea is to maximize power while managing heat; sitting under a hot sun might be good for solar cells, but it’s generally not great if you want to keep your phone from overheating. As it exists now, this technology can charge a phone at up to 2W, and is intended to pad out a phone’s reserved charge while it’s not in use.

The solar case seems like a nice halfway option.

The phone with built-in solar panel on the back is pretty self-explanatory, but I think the case is more interesting. It’s paired with a prototype phone that has a couple of small contacts on the side to deliver power from the case. Being able to swap it out for a regular case when you’re, say, going out at night would make sense. Likewise, having it around during a power outage would be handy.

Infinix is having a little fun at MWC, too, and is also showing off its second-gen color-changing E Ink phone. On the previous version, the back panel only changed color when plugged in. Now, it will run on the phone’s internal battery power, and is more customizable with a range of patterns and palettes.

They all look pretty similar, but in theory you can choose a photo as inspiration for the color palette or set it to change with the weather. Because it’s 2025, it does this with the help of — you guessed it — artificial intelligence.

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