14 DAY TRIAL // Mobile devices have more and more features, from playing music and recording videos to gaming and Internet access. Putting aside the entertainment features, Nokia thought that it's time for cell phones to protect customers' safety, so the Finnish company applied for a patent for a lightning detection software to be implemented in phones. The software should determine the distance of the lightning, when it occurs and warn the user of approaching strikes.
As you may or may not know, a lightning bolt is electric current that generates radio waves and produces frequencies with values between 10 Hz and 5 GHz. These frequencies can be received from distances of more than 30 km, so Nokia's researchers believe that the receivers a mobile phone features (like FM, tri-band GSM, Bluetooth, RFID and Wi-Fi) can pick up the lightning signals.
If you think this kind of software doesn't have a real utility, think again: statistics of the US National Severe Storms Laboratory show that each year about 300 persons are injured and about 67 are killed by lightning. Hence cell phones with lightning detectors could be very useful to outdoor workers or to those that enjoy hiking, jogging, golfing or any other outdoor activity.
No official declarations were made by Nokia until now, but the patent application, which is public, says: "A lightning detector wherein the detector uses at least two separate channels or frequency bands for lightning detection, characterized in that the lightning detector is a mobile RF device provided with radio interfaces for at least two communication channels or frequency bands, whereby at least one of which is normally a telecom channel/frequency range and wherein these channels/ranges are used in lightning detection." The entire application can be seen here.
This is, for sure, an interesting idea, and such mobile phones with lightning detectors may become common in a couple of years.