From the Inside Out

How many times have you reached for your cell phone only to find that the battery was drained or almost dead? That used to happen to me all the time until I got a new phone with a longer battery life. It’s not as frustrating now, but I still have to remember to charge the phone every 3-4 days.

What this world needs is a phone that charges itself. Seriously, we are busy people, and cell phones are a necessity these days. There’s nothing worse than needing your mobile phone and not having it because the battery is dead.

Cell phone owners across the world may have a reason to rejoice in the near future. Nokia is working on an answer to this plaguing problem. They have invented a cell phone that recharges itself by using ambient radio waves from the air. It can pick up all the bits and pieces of waves from TV, radio, and other mobile phone systems and convert that electromagnetic energy into electrical current that can then be used to recharge the phone’s battery.

How cool is that?

Currently the phone doesn’t harvest enough power to keep a drained battery alive during an active call, but it does provide enough juice to slowly recharge the battery while it’s in standby mode. Imagine that…never being forced to plug your phone in again and recharge it! Whoohoo!

The only bad news is that we have to wait about three to five years for the technology to be commercialized, so don’t throw away your charger just yet.

What would you do if you opened your cell phone bill and saw that you owed $65,000? Yikes! After fainting, I’d totally freak out. I didn’t think it was possible to rack up a $65K bill in one month. Yet a woman from North Richland Hills says that’s exactly what happened to her.

Normally the woman’s monthly bill would run about $160, but one day she opened her bill to find she owed $65,856.78. When she didn’t pay, the bill continued to grow until it peaked at $80,682 after being handed over to a credit agency. She didn’t even owe that much on her house…amazing!

Finally, she figured out what happened. Her 20 year old son had connected the cell phone to a computer and used it to watch videos on YouTube. One charge alone was for $14,000! The son claims he didn’t know he was tethering his phone to a computer. He thought he was using a friend’s Internet connection. Yeah…right.

Luckily, AT&T Wireless worked with the woman to reverse the charges. There’s still a lesson to be learned, though…don’t have kids.

Just kidding!  Keep an eye on that cell phone, and get an unlimited data plan. You never know when you’re going to need it.