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IT industry is divided over wireless chargers
A CHASM has opened up over new wireless charging technology which could do away with the plethora of adapters and cables that bedevil mobile users.
The idea is that it will eventually be possible to charge a device simply by placing it on any enabled flat service, such as a table, an aircraft seat shelf, a car console or an office desk.
The technology is identical to that in an electric toothbrush that charges when inserted into its base. The toothbrush and base are effectively two halves of a transformer, and the primary winding in the base delivers a current by electromagnetic induction into a coil in the toothbrush.
An industry body known as the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) has proposed a standard called Qi, which is set to be finalised later this year and will allow charging points to be installed in furniture and table mats, for example. Client devices will also need to be adapted.
Qi has the backing of some very big names, including National Semiconductor, Olympus, Nokia, Philips, Sanyo, Texas Instruments, Duracell, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Verizon.
Another member, Fulton Innovation, was at Mobile World Congress this year demonstrating a mock up of a Toyota console with Qi charging surfaces for mobile phones and sat-nav devices.
Fulton's technology is already used in the Dell Latitude Z laptop, but this includes proprietary technology because the draft Qi specification covers only low-power devices drawing up to 5W, equivalent to the maximum power delivered by a USB port. The next iteration will support enough power for a laptop.
Tim Bower, account representative at Fulton, claimed that Qi is already gaining momentum, and that a number of furniture manufacturers have shown interest in incorporating the standard into products.
The efficiency of the system is surprisingly high, considering that it lacks the tight coupling usual in a transformer. Bower said that it is around 70-80 per cent, about the same as a normal power adapter, thanks to the tiny gap of less than 5mm between the primary and secondary coils.
All of which sounds promising, except that Powermat, which claims to be the wireless power market leader with a large installed base, has so far refused to join the WPC.
Powermat, a joint venture between an Israeli and a US company, sells a range of products that adapt existing devices for wireless charging. They include charging mats for between one and three devices, adapters in the form of protective sleeves for iPhone and BlackBerry handsets, general purpose low-power chargers with a choice of connectors for different devices, and a netbook charger.
The firm has also developed replacement batteries for a number of mobile phones with the technology built in. Some phones also require replacement backs to contain the charging coil, but it does not add appreciably to the thickness. New this year are mobile charging mats that need to be charged before use.
Prices for Powermat-enabling a single device start at around £50, which includes the cost of the adapter and the charging mat. But the same mat can be used to charge different devices.
The Powermat stand at Mobile World Congress also showed a high-power surface driving an electric mixer, and one charging point is deliberately covered with water to show that this does not stop it working.
Powermat UK managing director George McGhee dismissed the WPC as "a kind of gentlemen's club of companies trying to push their own technology".
"They have talked about publishing a standard for the past two years and still no standard has emerged," he said.
McGhee claimed that Powermat had told the WPC that it would keep an eye on its activities and look at the standard when it becomes available. "It would not be a huge job for us to comply with the standard once we know what it is," he said.
But could Powermat do that retrospectively, so that existing products would be compliant? "We would have to look at the standard," said McGhee.
"The technology here is only electromagnetic induction. There are not thousands of different ways of implementing it."
McGhee explained that Powermat's intellectual property rested in the way that the receiving and charging device communicate using RFID wireless so that only the required amount of charge is delivered.
"There is intelligent power management going on in here. If we had waited for standards we would never have been in the market," he said.
"We wanted to let the consumers decide what they like and dislike. Since we launched this technology five months ago we have sold 800,000 devices into the US and Europe combined. That is a tick in the box as far as we are concerned." µ
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I can't believe this article didn't mention the Palm Pre, which has had inductive charging using its touchstone since it launched last June.
I'd settle for a USB port on everything, I can pick up a powered USB hub for peanuts and it won't be as inefficient as inductive charging.
@author
Geez Clive, how long did you work on that first sentence?
Yup, it's true, but I think you should really be asking how many are turned on, and how many dinner plates I own! :-)
Please do the world a favor and turn the computers off!
"I have more PCs than dining room plates", really is this true? get some virtualisation.
"I'll agree with you about SKY+ though, my brother has it and I wince whenever I have to use it."
Dont use it, stop wincing. In the UK you cant get the SKY chanels without the sky box!
Well someone like me was a very early adopter of hard disk video recording. These days I have a Media Centre machine and a dedicated Humax box. I'll agree with you about SKY+ though, my brother has it and I wince whenever I have to use it.
Just in case you hadn't noticed, this is a techie website, so odds are I would be a techie, and I am. I have more PCs than dining room plates and a Cat 5 wired house. I am not your grandfather! Yet I still don't have a major problem needing a powermat style solution, especially at those prices!
If you really want to stop me getting tangled up in wires, how about inventing a wireless gigabit ethernet?
Quite a few years ago before a trip abroad I bought a USB charging kit which included connectors for pretty much anything I could think of. It also included a mains wallwart with a USB 5v on the top plus a car cigar lighter to USB 5v adapter. It charges everything I own bar the laptop (Which is probably beyond the current capabilities of the powermat anyway).
It's small, compact, takes zero desk space and costs very little, and of course is more efficient because it uses those old solid conductor things.
The only place I would think the inductive solution would be beneficial is for cordless mice, make the Powermat a mouse mat and Bobs your father's brother.
It would be nice to get home and plop the mobile phone on the stand next to the kitchen table (letting it recharge automatically), sit down on the couch and plop the laptop on the living room table (getting it to grab its current from said table), and use either one at leisure.
If this tech evolves favorably, we might even be able to image TCP over magnetic induction, which would allow you to plop the external drive down on the same table and bingo! it connect to the laptop without a hitch, and without a cable.
Same for what is currently called a USB drive. Just plonk it on the table and your laptop detects it and can work with it.
Appliance paradise.
But I'm dreaming, aren't I ?
Niel: Have you ever heard of those charging stations with the power strip inside? You plug all your wall warts inside, and cables go out little holes in the front or back, and you put all the devices on top. Works great with our 2 cell phones and DS Lites.
Inductive charging = wasted electricity.
Do you expect people will go out and buy 3-gadget mats and then look for gadgets to charge on them, and phone makers will simply stop bundling wall warts, expecting consumers already have the mats? Unlikely. If the gadget manufacturers have to bundle wall warts 'just in case', why bother adding the mat option as well?
DVD offered a better picture than VHS, and major convience in no need to rewind, but other major advantages were (1) less expensive to make and took up less store shelf space, and (2) more opportunity for DRM. The big advantages that DVD had for retailers and movie studios, caused them to really push DVD - in so far as they just plain stopped selling popular new releases on VHS even though they could have squeezed a bit more blood out of that stone.
On the other hand, is this tech really 'better' for Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint and T-Moble, etc?
The phone companies will have to bundle either a wall wart or a mat with the phone, because if someone doesn't already own a mat they will need one. You can bet that wall warts will be less expensive for a while, and that means that the charging mat option (with whatever modification will be made to the phone) will be an added feature (read: costs more) or only available on "select models". So everyone will have a bunch of little mats for single appliances, and eventually buy a bigger one to reduce clutter. That seems like a lousy adoption model.
Strikes me that convincing someone like you of the benefits of inductive charging is akin to explaining the benefits of a PVR to a VCR owner when TiVo had just launched. Nowadays everyone understands why a TiVo (or in the UK, it's third-rate alternative Sky+) is so much better than a VCR and why it's a no-brainer when buying a hard-disk based PVR in place of a cassette based VCR.
Same with inductive charging: I think most will only understand the benefits (mainly convenience, also a single charging mat for any number of devices, and no cables except for the mat itself) once they have got past the stage you are at right now, where you think your current VCR (ie. cables) do a fine job.
Just as it's difficult to buy a VCR these days, once all mobile device manufacturers support inductive charging out of the box it may well prove difficult to track down a standard USB wall charger.
Sorry, I didn't realise that I was a bedevil mobile user...
This really does strike me as a product with very little market... I have one mobile phone, and even if I added an MP3 player (which I don't, because the phone does that) both those chargers would still be smaller and easier to carry than a damn great big expensive powermat thing.
Not that I would as most devices now charge from USB these days, so a couple of cables thrown in the laptop bag do the job for me. I do this so much I've got no idea where the phone's wall-wart charger is anymore!
Last problem, but by no means least, how does a powermat charger work in a car environment? Place the mat on the passenger seat and watch the phone repeatedly fly off into the door bin and footwell?