What like 10w? That’s nothing compared to almost any other application of electricity.
About the only other household application of electricity I can think of that would use around 10w is lighting and even with LEDs it isn’t much. Probably enough for a single room.
My point is if mobile phones aren't considered “low power”, then what would be?
I don’t know that there’s a standard definition, but in electronics I think it’s most common for “low power devices” to be referring to sub-watt power levels. There’s regular low power like Arduino, or ultra low power like in this article that consume at most milliwatts or microwatts.
> “It’s not entirely straightforward,” he says. “So putting one on your roof isn’t going to provide the power supply for your house at this stage. There’s quite a bit more to do on that front. But [it could work] in rural areas of low and middle income countries, for example, in applications where a small amount of power might be very useful, such as environmental sensors or charging a mobile phone.”
I don’t it’s wrong to think about the general applications but the title and research had a very narrow focus.
It’s also easy to miss that this was with a “AA” size container, and not the size of a pail or a dot battery.