An Open Standard For Wireless Charging?

Charging portable devices without needing to carry a power adapter sounds handy, and it's slowly getting closer to widespread use. IPAQ2000 writes that AT&T, Google and Starbucks announced yesterday "that they have joined the Power Matters Alliance (PMA). Founded by Powermat Technologies and Procter & Gamble, the PMA's Honorary Chairman is Google's Vint Cerf – one of the fathers of the Internet — and its board now also includes AT&T, Duracell, Google and Starbucks. The U.S. Government's Energy Star and Federal Communications Commission – both PMA members — are board observers." (How does Starbucks come into it? They're "testing PMA-compatible Wireless Charging Spots in select Boston stores.")

Comments

Will this chargers be "always on"?

[NotQuiteReal]

I hope they put a switch on them, so you can turn them off, when not in use.

I was surprised, a couple of years back, when I measured how much power unused wall-warts added up to. And don't even get me started on VCRs...

Re:Will this chargers be "always on"?

[Beorytis]

I was surprised, a couple of years back, when I measured how much power unused wall-warts added up to.

Have you checked lately? I have a Kill-a-Watt meter, and the loads on modern chargers have gone way down in the past 10 years, especially when the load is disconnected.

Re:Will this chargers be "always on"?

[ColdWetDog]

Wireless has been prove to caused brain damage in kids and gender neutral. It's health impacts are hidden by legislation corporate interests who want to sterilze people with cellphones. FACT.

Could you pleas provide a SOURCE

Look around you. All of those idiots using cellphones and wireless headsets. Do you think that nature could create such fools?

It's so obvious once you open your eyes.

Convenient but inefficient

[Coisiche]

It seems slightly strange that when a lot of effort is devoted to improving power efficiency this is championed when it's just favouring convenience over efficiency. Maybe one day people will regret that.

Re:Convenient but inefficient

[Artraze]

While I'm not going to say "never ever", the future you propose is not going to happen. Efficiency drops off _drastically_ with distance; the notion that you would have some power transmitter somewhere that would power a light somewhere else is so purely sci-fi that it's pointless to even speculate on efficiency of a setup. Sure, you could put a wireless power unit behind the wall where your TV is mounted, but why not just run a wire through the wall at that point? The hole isn't even an argument because you'll have already added some to mount it. Ditto with lights.

Wireless power isn't about wireless in the WiFi sense that it grands mobility, it's wireless in the NFC sense that it doesn't require a wire to be plugged in. That means less cycles on a fragile connecter, no plug/unplug time, etc. Maybe even allowing hermetically sealed devices. Realistically the most this might be used for is a laptop, but even then I think it would usually make more sense to just plug it in (e.g. at home... this might make sense for a cafe table).

Re:Too much of a good thing?

[fustakrakich]

I have the original 15 year old battery in my laptop that still gives me about an hour and a half, down from maybe 2 hours when it was new. The real limit seems to be the number of cycles it goes through. I did unplug the machine when I wasn't using it. I believe the internal charger shuts off when the battery is full. Overcharging should not be an issue.

Re:Too much of a good thing?

[marcansoft]

That isn't caused by overcharging, it's caused by the battery simply being at 100% charge. Li-ion batteries like to be stored at 40% charge, and degrade much faster at 100%.

The technical solution to this problem is a trivial firmware change to the charging controller to only charge the battery to 40%. However, I suspect nobody has done it because nobody has figured out how to get the users to switch to "40% maintenance charge mode" when always plugged in, without pissing them off when they run off and discover that their device is only 40% charged. The fundamental problem is being able to predict when the user will need to actually use the battery, and only fully charge it immediately prior.

Re:Too much of a good thing?

[queazocotal]

Thinkpads can do this.
I have my thinkpad battery set to charge to 80%.
Yes, it means I have 20% less capacity - for the first year or so.
After that, I actually have more, as it degrades _lots_ less fast.

Re:Apple?

[pecosdave]

It will set a standard that everyone will adopt so Apple will have to watch it closely to insure their devices don't accidentally work with it as well as the version Apple themselves are working on.

It finally caught on

[Anonymous Coward]

Tesla was just born about a 100 years too soon to have his wireless ideas popularized, regardless of whether his methods were more or less efficient then the way forward this group plans to go. I'm personally glad to see this being researched. You can't make an inefficient process more efficient if you ignore it. Who knows what we'll learn and discover while researching this topic not to mention the potential device revolution when you're no longer limited in size by ports for power and data transfer. Maybe we'll start seeing foldable devices that can open to a full sheet of paper (a good scifi example is the device used in the movie 'Looper'; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I9MsT7juTM&noredirect=1).

I'm excited to see what comes out of this group!

Open Standard competition

[jader3rd]

I'm sure the public is going to love figuring out if a wireless charging pad is a Qi charging pad or a PMA charging pad.

Re:....mmmmkay

[vlm]

I'll put it right next to the flying car and the fusion generator.

Your wireless charging pad will be easier to find than that.. it'll be under the sleeping cat. If X% of the power gets turned into heat, and cats have a magic ability to find horizontal sources of heat and then sleep on them, simply locate the sleeping cat to find the wireless charger underneath the cat. As for the phone? Oh that's on the floor with a broken screen, fluffy knocked it off the charger.

There is one already called Qi (pronounced "Chi")

[denis-The-menace]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qi_(inductive_power_standard)

Samsung and Nokia are already releasing phones with it, too.

How many of these wireless charging standards do we need? (Oops, I'm gettin' it now...)

Re:Too much of a good thing?

[bemymonkey]

Try the "Battery maintenance" button in the power manager's Battery tab.

Re:Too much of a good thing?

[kullnd]

I do allow my X220 to run full 100% charge, but it is rarely at 100% as I plug in most of the time and my battery is set to not start charging until it is below 70% ... As I move it from place to place and leave it in standby, and occasionally run on battery power, the battery slowly runs down to less than 70% and this setting keeps my battery from getting charge current more than an average of probably 4-5 times in a month. For my T510 that is always docked, the battery is set to start at 50% and stop at 80% since I just really don't use it or need the capacity.

This is one of my favorite features of the ThinkPad ... As a reseller, I generally set all of my clients systems to start at about 90-93% to prevent the 1% charge cycles.

Re:Too much of a good thing?

[NatasRevol]

Good point.

I can still use my phone/tablet/ipod when they're plugged into the charger. Including making phone calls, playing games, etc.

Can't do that if it needs to be sitting on/right next to the hotspot.

Re:Actually,

[alva_edison]

Why don't we cut out the middle man (batteries) and just go to wireless powering of devices? http://ewh.ieee.org/r7/hamilton/biographies/JacksonS.htm

If you thought cellphone coverage was bad...

Re:Too much of a good thing?

[marcansoft]

Ah, one of those stupid Windows-only features. Sigh.

There seems to be a reverse-engineered driver for Linux but support is sketchy for the X220. I guess I'll try it and see.