PureLiFi's dongle replacement is … a dongle

The Scottish Li-Fi pioneer inches closer to putting miniaturized LED lightwave receivers inside phones, tablets, and laptops. The company revealed a technological breakthrough on the road to dumping dongles (USB sticks). And while the size of the circuitry has indeed shrunk, what pureLiFi showed as a dongle replacement was, um, a dongle. It's part of a system that pureLiFi has branded LiFi-XC.

For a quick refresher: Li-Fi, or light fidelity, transmits the Internet wirelessly via the lightwaves emitted by LED light sources. It is in prolonged early development days, yet some proponents believe it will eventually complement and offload crowded Wi-Fi services (which use radiowaves) by opening up a vast amount of spectrum.