first patent for solar powered portable devices. the actual device can be powered by the sun. this is according to the website patentlyapple. here to tell us all about it, staff writer stacy cowly. stacy, tell me what the major advance in this patent would be over the fact that some people do use devices which allow you to use the sun to charge something while happen to be in the sun. this is a bit of an advantage over that. yeah. the big distinction here is that a lot of the device that s let you charge are external and they only use solar power. apple is looking at something baked into the device. the device, of course, is going to have multiple charging options, you can plug it into the wall, you can charge it off your computer. so what this covers is a battery charging manager that knows the best power source and how best to be drawing down on that. for instance, if there s more charge in your solar cells,