Hydrogen-powered iPhone 6 lasts a week without recharging

A British company thought to be working closely with Apple has created a hydrogen fuel cell for an iPhone 6 that allows the device to go a week without recharging.

According to reports, Intelligent Energy has created a working iPhone 6 prototype that looks no different from any other iPhone 6 except for tiny vents in the rear that allow  imperceptible amounts of water vapor to escape

The prototype contains both a rechargeable battery and its own hydrogen fuel cell, according to a report in the Telegraph.

Hydrogen fuel cells generate energy by combining hydrogen and oxygen; the only emission from the process is water.

Fuel cells supply hydrogen to a negative anode (an electrode through which electrical current flows), releasing electrons. The electrons then flow to a positive cathode (another electrode) to generate electricity. In addition, after releasing electrons, the hydrogen becomes a hydrogen ion moving to positive cathode and bonding with oxygen in the air, forming water.

Hydrogen is the simplest and most common molecule known to exist. Because of that, it is a part of almost every other substance, such as water and hydrocarbons. Hydrogen is also found in biomass, which includes all plants and animals

Intelligent Energy has produced more than 2,000 patents related to fuel cells, which it has used to create batteries for cars and a portable recharger called the Upp. The Upp is a mini-hydrogen fuel cell that charges any USB-compatible mobile device, including smartphones, tablets, portable gaming consoles or digital cameras.

Like any fuel cell, the one in Intelligent Energy's iPhone requires recharging with hydrogen gas. Intelligent Energy said that could be done through an adapted headphone socket.

Intelligent Energy is now working on a commercial version of the smartphone fuel cell that would be in the form of a small cartridge that fits into the bottom of a phone. The cartridge would supply power for a week and could be discarded after use.

Intelligent Energy's finance chief, Mark Lawson-Statham, told the Telegraphthat the smartphone fuel cell technology is still a couple of years out from being commercialized.

Sent from my iPadc

Sent from my iPadc

How to Negotiate with Yourself

Erica Ariel Fox is a New York Times bestselling author, a negotiation lecturer at Harvard Law School, and a senior advisor to Fortune 500 companies. Fox's essay is featured in The Executive Edge: An Insider's Guide to Outstanding Leadership, and I'm adapting it here to highlight her research on self-awareness in leadership. 

Accessing Your Inner World

Understanding the diverse nature of your inner world takes a lot of work. And business leaders operate in an environment of incredible complexity, uncertainty, and pressure... so they usually don't have time to study the underpinnings of this inner world. But after advising leaders for 20 years, I know that they can improve their performance by learning to turn inward and negotiate with themselves.

My goal is to make this journey a bit easier for business leaders. I want to equip them with a user-friendly tool to develop self-awareness and, in turn, to take more effective action.

Your Custom Archetypes

Take the notion of archetypes, for example. Archetypes are a simple shorthand way of expressing universal elements of the psyche. For instance, Peter Pan is an archetype. Peter Pan represents the archetype of the eternal child and that little part in us that would like to never grow up.

I've found that identifying personal archetypes is a highly valuable exercise for leaders. It requires self-discovery and self-development, and it allows people to access aspects of themselves they may not have used very much before. The best metaphor is a top-level corporate team of executives.

Imagine the roles on a corporate top team. There are:

• a CEO who holds the vision and sets direction for the future
• a CFO who analyzes data and manages risk
• a CHRO who manages people
• a COO who makes sure everything gets done

At a meeting, these leaders bring differing expertise and priorities. If any of them missed that meeting, the team would make decisions that lacked a perspective vital to the company's success.

Leveraging Your C-Suite

So just as people on a high-level team bring their opinions and agendas to a meeting, you have a high-level team functioning inside of you. These are your inner negotiators.

The members of your inner team operate in a similar way, bringing their own interests and values to the table. Sometimes they dialogue. Sometimes they get into a screaming match. But you do have these distinct voices, with these unique functions, just like the team that runs your company.

Most leaders start realizing these impulses come from different parts of themselves. Valuable parts of themselves! For a lot of professionals, this is brand new territory, far from what they studied in their MBA program or learned when they trained as an engineer. It's always inspiring to watch groups of high IQ, quantitative thinkers step into the unknown waters of self-exploration. Naming these four parts of the self makes things concrete where they used to seem too messy.

Using this exercise with thousands of people over the last ten years, I've found that if leaders can work nimbly with these four archetypes, then in most business situations they will have what they need to get positive outcomes. That same principle applies in personal life, too.

Fox's entire essay can be found in The Executive Edge: An Insider's Guide to Outstanding Leadership. You can also watch my conversation with Erica inLeadership: A Master Class (Getting Beyond Yes).