Do you wear your sunglasses at night, like Corey Hart? Do you wear your sunglasses at day, like, uh, everyone else? No matter how you wear those solar protection eyewear devices, they do what they are intended. They protect you from that evil sun, or from the evil glare of people that just aren’t as cool as you. Aside from those things, however, sunglasses don’t do a whole lot. When will they catch up and join their brothers and sisters in the wearable tech revolution? When will they, say, be used to store up solar rays and use said rays to charge up my devices? Not too long from now, actually.
An industrious designer in the great state of California has engineered a pair of Ray-Ban Wayfarers that not only look cool. but double down as a charger for your iPhone. How does it work? It’s simple really. There are solar panels embedded into the glasses themselves. During the day, as you wear them, they slowly fill up their power cell via the magic of the sun’s glorious rays. Then, at night, the power cell can fuel everyone’s favorite Apple-produced phone. For how, however, these can only be used with said Apple devices. Android heads are out of luck.
Another downer? This is only a working prototype design for now. If you want bad ass sunglasses that power your phone, you are going to have to head over to your local solar panel store and build some yourself. We’ll let you know when this sad fact changes. In the meantime, here is a video.
http://vimeo.com/75239761
