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Cutting the Power Cable: How Advantageous Is Wireless Charging?
Lucas123 writes "Furniture and auto makers are already ramping up production of wireless charging for mobile devices that will also allow I/O for music and data synchronization. Thanks to the widely accepted Qi standard, there shouldn't be a problem with interoperability, but how advantageous is wireless charging? Would it really offer more charging opportunities for mobile users in coffee shops who are today hamstrung by how many outlets are available? And then there's the added cost and reduced efficiency. As wireless systems are more complicated, a wireless battery charger will be more expensive and there are resistive losses on the coil, stray coupling, etc."
"I just hope no one spills their coffee on the expensive new charging table."
It'll be waterproof. Nice feature. My electric toothbrush has had this for years.
For anyone who's followed their dentist's advice, wireless charging is not new.
Thanks to the widely accepted Qi standard, there shouldn't be a problem with interoperability [...]
Just then, Tim Cook looked at that with a cold, calculated expression, and simply responded, "Challenge accepted".
We pretty much already have common connectors with the exception of Apple.
I agree, its only value is the "coolness" factor (which only matters to those under 30). It won't be a real benefit unless it gets good enough that you can charge your phone without taking it out of your pocket. Plugging it in is no bigger a deal than laying it on a charging pad. If I could have a wireless charger that would charge it from across my living room, that would be great; I'd buy one. But to have to put it on a mat, using more electricity than if I plugged it in? No thanks.
Free Martian Whores!
Something to consider - I've replaced the MicroUSB connector in my cellphone *twice*. The phone would work for about a year, then it would go flaky - you'd have to wiggle the connector a few times for the phone to reliably charge, and sometimes I'd go check on it and it wouldn't be charging - and it would happen with different cables. Supposedly these things are rated for 10,000 cycles, but I haven't seen it. Maybe my phone does something it shouldn't, like spark the +5V pin when the connector is plugged in. *shrug*
Secondly, I've caught the cord of my phone multiple times and pulled it off the desk onto the floor - and my cats/dogs have probably done it more times than I have.
Though there's an efficiency loss in wireless charging versus conductive charging, I wonder if there's an efficiency gain that exists in less phones being repaired/replaced because of damage related to conductive charging.
(Note that this is not a well thought out, researched argument - just a dumb thought.)
I agree, its only value is the "coolness" factor (which only matters to those under 30). It won't be a real benefit unless it gets good enough that you can charge your phone without taking it out of your pocket. Plugging it in is no bigger a deal than laying it on a charging pad. If I could have a wireless charger that would charge it from across my living room, that would be great; I'd buy one. But to have to put it on a mat, using more electricity than if I plugged it in? No thanks.
If you eliminate the need for a power connector, it would be pretty simple to start producing smartphones and other devices that are waterproof themselves. That would be a nice improvement. My last smartphone met with a watery grave. I see it as just a gimmick to add this onto an existing device, but for new devices designed around this it would be useful.
Plugging it in is no bigger a deal than laying it on a charging pad.
I bought one of those firesale HP touchpads. They have wireless charging with a special stand and it is the single best feature of the device. Plugging in to charge sucks - there is wear-and-tear on the mini-usb port, the fiddling to get everything lined up requires good lighting and too much time. With the wireless charging stand, it is dead simple - just put it on the stand, listen for the "bonk" sound the OS makes when charging starts and everything just works. It is so much more convenient that wireless charging is now mandatory for any of my future phone and tablet purchases.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Each time I read a wireless charging article I find people who seem incapable of believing how simply most consumers will use this technology. Consumers don't want wireless charging primarily for use at a coffee shop, or on the bus, or in a train. They aren't, for the most part, interested in the ability to top off at the airport. No, for all of those things consumers have always demanded enough battery life to make it through the day without needing to recharge. Preferably several days. Most phones deliver, at least for the right usage patterns.
Wireless charging is all about forgetting to charge at home, and the inconvenience of 25 different chargers. Sitting next to me are propretary chargers for proprietary devices. A digital SLR. A digital point and shoot. An old cell phone. A new cell phone. A camcorder. Some regular AA's for my Apple wireless keyboard. The number of wall warts and specialty cables is astounding and annoying. Even if all the tech wasn't a disaster, sometimes I'm just tired and forget to charge my phone overnight.
This is why wireless is such a sexy idea. Imagine a wireless charging pad where you store your cameras, and one on your bedside table. You just toss your phone or cameras on it at night, wake up and it is charged. No plugging in cables. No row of wall warts. No incompatible battery chargers. No running out of outlets along a segment of counter.
Wireless charging's killer app is at home. One charging "area" for multiple devices. Make it cheap enough I can afford one by my desk, in my kitchen, and at my night stand and my gizmos will never run out of juice again, and topping off at a coffee shop, airport, or other place will diminish in need.
I dunno, I have a ruggedized Samsung mobile phone. It's waterproof to 1 meter, dustproof, vibration resistant, etc. The microphone and speaker are behind impermeable membranes while the battery compartment and microUSB charging port are behind separate gasketed panels.
Every time I open the charging panel I put wear and tear on the gasket material. If I could wirelessly charge it then I'd only ever need to open it if I needed to change SIM cards, the battery, or the rare occasion where I'd need to plug it into the computer for some reason. Wireless charging, even on a charging pad, has some appeal to me.
The power connector itself is a massive point of failure, as they get full of dust, dirt, bent, static discharge, etc. My girlfriend has gone through 4 phones essentially because the microUSB power connector failed. I recently had to do some minor surgery to my Galaxy Nexus because the power connector was slightly bent, so that it always showed that it was charging even when not connected.
Good riddance to wired power. I'd gladly take my phone it out of my pocket and place it on a pad. I can't wait until such charging pads can be built into couch arms, tables, desks, etc. I'll never have to worry about whether my devices are charged. And some of them could be physically sealed from dust and water, substantially increasing their lifetime. (If you can forgo the headphone jack, microphone, etc -- like a on tablet)
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
Imagine how many people will walk away from their cellphones after they've put them on the table at the coffee shop. The old adage "keep it in your pants" will take on a whole new life.
I'm sure there's definitely a whiz-bang factor at work here, but I think there's more to it than that.
Power is the last reason you need to connect a cable to most wireless devices now. Have low bandwidth data needs communicated at short distances (both a limitation and a feature)? There's NFC. Have one or two-way audio, or higher speed data transmission with the range of a room or two? There's Bluetooth. Need to communicate at greater range with much higher bandwidth? There's Wifi. Need to charge your device? There's Qi.
Why do I need a USB port anymore? My phone syncs over my WiFi network. It talks to my car audio system via Bluetooth. It talks to my car speaker phone or my headset via Bluetooth too. It just might, someday very soon, pay for my purchase via NFC as I swipe it at the checkout lane. Someday soon, you may even pair your device with Bluetooth accessories or join it to a WiFi network by passing it over a NFC pad. So I have to find the right cable and power adapter to charge it? Why should I have to do that when there's Qi?
Given that Qi can be combined with NFC, its possible that there is some hardware design synergy that makes the cost of implementing both together more palatable than implementing either alone. Honestly, if Apple were a member of the Wireless Power Consortium, I'd expect the new iPhone to have both NFC and Qi. Even without that membership, it just might anyway.
-- Begin thoughtfuly, end insensitively.
It has more impact that way.
A typical person in the Western world uses, on average, 2+ kW. That's not 2kWh per day, that's 2+ kWh EACH AND EVERY HOUR.
Can you back this up a bit? You're saying that the average Westerner uses 48+ kWh every day. That's well over a megaWatt hour every month (and closer to 1.5 MWh). Does this figure include the average person's share of the power used for street lights, traffic lights, businesses, etc.?
Apparently you coffee test all the electronics in your house before use.
Clearly his keyboard failed the test:
But is is coffee proof? ... Tht may burn thrpung seals and gaskets.
If you can waterproof the ubiquitous USB connection
Right. So, can you? Because if you can't, it renders the rest of your statement moot.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Yes, you can. Waterproof the port, allow the conductive to pass through the waterproofed port. Set up a second ground/power pair that is ONLY used to detect when the device is submerged in a conductive medium and use that to disable the other pins avoiding a short circuit.
The metal pins still won't be happy to be submerged in a corrosive salt-water solution but if you rinse it off right away it should be ok.
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My concern would be the charging efficiency compared to a wired charger.
Now, I don't know about the efficiency of this kind of wireless charger or of wired chargers for that matter, but I'd expect a consumer grade wireless charger to be less efficient than a wired one. If we're going to put a few hundred million of these things in service I'd like to know what the energy penalty will be.
Eliminating the battery would be great as long as you can manage to make it through your day never getting more than a few inches from a charging station. I envision thousands of miles of charging trays built into every sidewalk, wainscott, chair-rail, railing, escalator, and countertop. You could have hanging charge-lines you could take with you when you cross streets like the overhead power used for trolley-cars.
Thank you for that awesome 1930s-radiopunk-dystopia mental image.
Seriously, I want a wallpaper of that.
(Once a day, like clockwork, New York City shuts down as Pirate Nikola Tesla broadcasts tendrils of free charge-lightning all across the Eastern Seaboard from his secret Magnifying Transmitter base. Desperate power-hungry citizens raise dirty vacuum tubes to the heavens to harvest illegal St Elmo's Fire. Meanwhile mammoth Edison Company marketing dirigibles, fresh from destroying the Martian invading force, drop Tripods full of patent lawyers in the Los Angeles desert to storm Fortress Hollywood...)
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
What's with all the contrarians? Why do we need wireless charging? For the same reasons your phone has WiFi and not an RJ45 port...
As a heavy Android phone user, I'm anxiously awaiting some wireless charging standard. I have wall-warts all over my house, so that wherever I sit, I can plug-in... Because cell phones just can't handle even a half day of heavy use between recharges. And even if one could, I wouldn't want to cut it that close.
So now, my cell is perpetually tethered to a microUSB cable, getting pulled off tables onto the floor, getting tugged when I try to move it and there's not enough slack, getting stress on the cable and socket when I want to set it on the armrest right where the plug is sticking out, and always fumbling with putting the connector in the right way, and pulling it out when I go, or it becomes a particular nusiance, maybe 10x a day.
What's more is the nusiance of travel... I've got a cigarette lighter to microUSB plug for driving, then I've got to carry a wall adapter for motel rooms, conference rooms, or whatnot, and then supplament that with a AA battery to microUSB adapter when I'm not within reach of a power outlet, but still need to use my phone heavily. Times like flying in particular.
All that stuff is much, much larger than my cell phone, and could be eliminated from my bag if restaurants, hotels, cars, passenger jets, and conference rooms had them built-in.
Now let's consider that I carry two or more devices around... One phone needs one charger, while the other phone won't charge from it at all. Wall chargers break USB specs in multiple, and mutually incompatible ways. That's why we have items like the Skiva QuadPower, which has one port that works on Apple devices, one port that works on Android devices, and two generic USB ports that are needed for Palm/Blackberry/BREW/Nokia/etc devices, that won't charge from the other ports.
And that's just getting started. Throw in tablets, or netbooks/ultrabooks, or even laptops. Tablets are almost always able to charge from USB, even if only very slowly, because we've built the modern world on the non-standard USB charging standard, and everyone wants to be able to get some charge out of it in the worst case. But the low voltage and power of USB leads to far more contortions than even smartphones have to contend with... And all because USB is such a poor charging standard. I'd sure love a universal charger, but even low power netbooks/ultrabooks don't even try to use USB, because the voltage is far too low, and they'd have to go nuts to add more special-cases to USB wall chargers.
We clearly need something better... Something that can supply more than 5v, and a whole lot of amps.
Who wouldn't want to have a flat pad they can put on their coffee table, that automatically starts charging any device you set on it? Laptop, cell phone, tablet, maybe laptop batteries not currently connected, etc. Throw in TV remote controls, flashlights, cordless keyboards/mice, console game controllers, etc., for good measure. It would be an incredible improvement over the current disjointed charging situation. And don't start complaining about efficiency... Even if it's got high losses, being able to top-off everywhere you go is much more efficient than having your battery get drained.
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