It's a neat proof-of-concept, but the video gets a little optimistic and hand-wavey about how practical this could actually ever be.
"Right now we have interruptions, but[...] that interruption amount is going to continually decrease as we make these systems better and more energy-efficient."
Is that really the case? The limiting factor here is not just the efficiency of harvesting energy. The energy being harvested from the sun and from the button presses has a hard cap at some point, and while I don't know enough about the topic to do the math, I'd have to assume it's not particularly high. Even if you were able to harvest 100% of the sunlight hitting a smartphone (quick Google search says solar panels harvest ~15%), and 100% of the energy from the taps of a user's finger, would that be anywhere close to enough power to run the thing? This seems like more of a conceptual limit than a technological one.
"Right now we have interruptions, but[...] that interruption amount is going to continually decrease as we make these systems better and more energy-efficient."
Is that really the case? The limiting factor here is not just the efficiency of harvesting energy. The energy being harvested from the sun and from the button presses has a hard cap at some point, and while I don't know enough about the topic to do the math, I'd have to assume it's not particularly high. Even if you were able to harvest 100% of the sunlight hitting a smartphone (quick Google search says solar panels harvest ~15%), and 100% of the energy from the taps of a user's finger, would that be anywhere close to enough power to run the thing? This seems like more of a conceptual limit than a technological one.