Ray-Ban Shama Shades With Solar Panels Would Charge Your iPhone

We've seen plenty of wearables with solar panels built into them, but how about the most obvious wearable: sunglasses? That's exactly what these Ray-Ban "Shama" concept sunglasses are. The temples (arms) of the sunglasses capture sunlight throughout the day, and you plug them into your iPhone when the sun goes down.

One of the temples would detach, revealing a connector to plug directly into an iPhone. The energy would be stored throughout the body of the sunglasses, presumably. This may or may not be technically viable: The iPhone sucks down a lot of power, and solar power tends to be more passive than wall power when transferring power.

The design is just a concept at this point. The Shama was envisioned and mocked up by Cutwater's Sayalee Kaluskar while studying at the Miami Ad School, replete with sassy ad copy ("So now, even when the sun goes down, you still look badass.") But we think someone should work out the technical details.

The Shama would certainly help solve one of the most pressing–but seemingly all-too-often-ignored–challenges in smartphone technology, namely battery life. Incidentally, "Shama" is Urdu for "lamp" or "candle". Anyone care to light the way to making these a reality?

SOURCE: CNET