Recently Apple filed for a patent for a solar powered cell within an iPod, under the screen; prompting speculation that the technology giant was looking at bringing out a solar powered iPod. However, as we look at the practicality of such a device, it does seem that this is unlikely.

The problem is, that although solar powered technology has been around for some time in equipment such as watches and calculators, they require considerably less juice to function than a modern day iPod. In fact, to power an iPod on the same technology you would be looking at the power of approximately one million watches.

Hardly practical.

It is possible however to power an iPod by solar power, but you would require something like Brunton’s Solaris i6, which would give enough power for the job. The problem with this is that it’s larger than an iPod and costs in the region of $210, which is about the same as an iPod.

So doubling an iPod’s price and increasing its size just to make it solar powered? That seems unlikely.

The other problem of course is charging your iPod. How much damage can you expect to do to the storage drive by leaving your iPod baking in the sun?

There are a great many patents filed by companies such as Apple for whenever one of the engineers has an idea; this looks like it could be one such case.