Pyron uses an acrylic concentrating lens, which focuses the equivalent of the light from 6, 500 suns on a small optical device, which then spreads it across the surface of the solar cell.

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Key to the device is what's missing: Instead of the optical drive built into most other portable devices, the MacBook Air can wirelessly borrow another device's optical drive, so that it can access software or data stored on a disk.

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Chatter, 40, now works on patching his device into Lucent's optical interface to create an optical on-ramp.

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As its development name, the "XO-4 Touch" suggests, the device will come equipped with an optical multi-touch capable screen from Neonode.

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The Android 4.1 device's ports include Micro HDMI, TOSLink Optical audio, Ethernet, micro AB USB (for service and support only, Google says), and banana jack speaker outputs.

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To have a fully flexible finished product, both parts of the display have to be flexible - the optical frontplane and the backplane, where transistors are - as well as the device's battery, the outer shell, the touchscreen and other components.

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He designed a device that is basically a 6-inch-long broom of 50, 000 optical fibers.

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