According to Tradethenews.com, employees at Apple have filed a patent to place solar cells on portable devices. With that technology, Apple’s devices like iPhone could have photovoltaic cells stacked underneath LCD touch screens, thus maximizing the area available for harnessing the sun.

The filing said that information regarding the performance of a device’s solar cells could be displayed on the main screen next to info for battery power, text message alerts and time of day. Or this information could also appear on top of the solar cells themselves, which are likely to display some version of the Apple logo.

[via Forbes]