The University of Washington campus in Seattle is a short drive from companies such as Amazon and Microsoft that are famous for their disruptive technology. Engineers at the school hope their new telephone will also become a game changer in the competitive world of consumer electronics.
They recently developed a battery-free cellphone that can send and receive calls using only a few microwatts of power. It can sense speech, actuate the earphones, and switch between uplink and downlink communications, all in real time.