Fujitsu Eyes Wireless Gadget Charging For 2012

angry tapir writes "Researchers at Fujitsu Laboratories have developed a wireless charging system that they say can simultaneously charge a variety of portable gadgets over a distance of several centimeters without the need for cables. The system, which will be detailed at a technical conference in Japan this week, could begin appearing in mobile phones and other products as soon as 2012, the company said. Fujitsu's system is based on magnetic resonance in which power can be wirelessly sent between two coils that are tuned to resonate at the same frequency."

Comments

Re:Already here for a while now

[OBeardedOne]

As a follow on to my earlier post, this is the clincher for the tech - from the article:

"Fujitsu's system couples a coil with a capacitor in receiving devices. The size of the device determines the size of coil it can accommodate and that in turn affects the capacitance."

So the bigger the coil in the receiving device the better. That aint going to go down so well for mobile phones, ipods etc where the size of the battery/power supply is absolutely crucial to the success of the product i.e. smaller is better. If it doesn't make sense for the mobile market then it won't be anything more than a niche product for the foreseeable future. Particularly when the benefit hardly comes close to outweighing the cost - really, how hard is it to plug a phone in?