Orange unveils mobile phone charging t-shirts

UK mobile phone network Orange has unveiled a t-shirt which can charge your mobile phone from sound.

The Orange 'Sound Charge' t-shirt has been developed with renewable energy experts GotWind. The t-shirt is being trialled at the Glastonbury music festival, so while you are listening to your favourite music acts, you can also charge your mobile phone.

So how does it work? Here comes the technical part. According to Orange, the t-shirt uses an existing technology called Piezoelectric film, but reverses its use. This modified film acts similarly to a microphone and absorbs sound pressure waves. The sound waves are converted via the compression of interlaced quartz crystals into an electrical charge. The phone can be connected to the t-shirt using a variety of different connecting leads. When used with sounds levels of around 80dB the t-shirt could generate up to 6 watt hours of power over the course of the Glastonbury weekend, which is enough to charge two standard mobile phones or one smartphone.

This isn't the first time Orange has created an innovative way of charging your mobile phone at Glastonbury. Last year it developed a pair of wellies for Glastonbury that could charge a mobile phone.