Are Solar Powered Apples In Our Near Future?

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If you’re fond of the various Apple devices out there, from the iPad to the iPhone and the iPod and beyond, then you know they’re terrific portable devices. But with all portable devices, the issue of battery life comes constantly into play. The folks at Apple, though, may be looking to change the game once again for portable devices by including solar panels to help them charge on the go.

We all know that Apple has already taken out a patent on a solar-powered iPhone, as we’d heard about this back in January. And we all know about the spectacular array of solar charging devices on the market for our tiny friends. But Apple is currently evaluating a wide array of possible panels to include in their devices, and according to the current reports, most of these are Taiwanese makers, which makes some sense given earlier reports that Taiwanese integrated circuits were looking to be a big part of the iPad 3.

There will, according to those same reports, be a bit of a lag in getting the solar cells into devices. We all know that Samsung has been doing something similar already for some time now (and Samsung is the imitator?) with their solar powered laptop, but to get those small solar cells integrated into, say, an iPhone will likely take some time.

I like the idea of a phone or similar device that charges itself when you leave it in the sun, but at the same time, I’m familiar enough with solar charging apparatuses to know that you’re not going to get much of a charge out of something sufficiently small to put on the back of, say, an iPhone. They’d need some better panel technology in general to really get a spark, if you’ll pardon the small pun, out of me. And considering the number of solar powered bumper cases geared toward charging the iPhone, is this even really necessary?

But what do you guys think? Think this is just Apple’s attempt at jumping on a bandwagon? Or do they have a good idea here whose time has more than clearly come? No matter what you think about this, we want to hear from you, so head down to the comments section and tell us what you think.