Duracell's Powermat Ties the Knot With PowerKiss

Lucas123 writes "Powermat Technologies has announced an agreement to merge with its European counterpart, PowerKiss, in a deal that will make what once was two disparate wireless power specifications come together under one. Among airports, coffee shops, malls and arenas, Powermat, owned by Duracell, claims it has more than 1,500 charging spots in the U.S. In Europe, PowerKiss said it has 1,000 charging spots in airports, hotels and cafes; it also recently announced wireless charging at some McDonald's restaurants. Powermat and PowerKiss are attempting to prevail against the competing Wireless Power Consortium (WPC), which supports the widely adopted Qi (pronounced "chee") standard used in Nokia, Samsung, and LG products. Like the Qi standard, the PMA's Power 2.0 specification is based on magnetic induction wireless power technology."

Comments

Widely adopted?

[lxs]

Either I have been living under a rock or this article is from the future.
I have as of today encountered no products using Qi, Powerkiss or Powermat technology. A quick search gives me the impression that wireless charging products are still a rarity. Let's hope that for once a single standard will emerge quickly.

Re:Widely adopted?

[mwissel]

I would have agreed with you if I hadn't recently get a hold of my new Galaxy S4. Although it not labelled as Qi anywhere, the wireless charging mat adheres to this standard. Same goes for the other newer Samsung devices. Given the number of sold units by the company, you might well say Qi is widely adopted.

Re:Widely adopted?

[Nerdfest]

A Nexus 4 perhaps? They're pretty common. Personally, I don't care which standard is used as long as it's an open standard. Proprietary standards where you need to pay licensing are what tends to cause this sort of thing to happen in the first place.

Re:Widely adopted?

[gagol]

And that is why nobody cares about this news... moving on.

Re:Widely adopted?

[gagol]

Widely adopted: most devices in use are using it. This do not qualify.

Re:Widely adopted?

[mrbester]

There were Powermat mats and adapters going stupid cheap on amazon.co.uk recently (so I grabbed two sets of foldable ones, but I've never heard of Powerkiss...

Re:Widely adopted?

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, I am sure you could find someone owning that phone in most large cities in the world!

Re:Widely adopted?

[NFN_NLN]

A Nexus 4 perhaps? They're pretty common. Personally, I don't care which standard is used as long as it's an open standard. Proprietary standards where you need to pay licensing are what tends to cause this sort of thing to happen in the first place.

On the other hand an open standard with no regulation tends to breed low quality knock-offs that cheapen the image. There needs to be a happy median.

I own a Nexus 4 with Qi. But I wonder how fundamentally different these wireless chargers really are. How easy is it to retrofit a Qi to a Duracell and vice versa? Are the coils the same and it's just the frequency? Once a winner is declared it would be wasteful to turf all those systems...

Re:Widely adopted?

[hairyfeet]

Hell I work in computer retail and have encountered it exactly ONCE, and it was a gaming mouse that charged off the pad. This to me sounds like how they argued over DVD-A and SACD and in the end nobody gave a rat's ass about either tech so they both went exactly nowhere.

If anything from what I'm seeing everything powered by USB is the wave of the future, damned near every laptop brags about how you can charge phones off their USB, you see USB disposable "quick charge" power packs at every checkout here, it looks like my dad is right in that everything is gonna end up USB.

Re:Widely adopted?

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand an open standard with no regulation tends to breed low quality knock-offs that cheapen the image.

Ever heard of USB?

Re:Widely adopted?

[davydagger]

open standard does not imply "no regulation".

open as in the specifications are posted, and free to use, but you can still demand rigorious testing before you let people stick the label on boxes.

USB does this. There is a USB foundation, and your device needs to be certified before it can be called "USB", and for what speed and substandard compliiance.

This is very fair.

Re:Widely adopted?

[EdZ]

On the other hand an open standard with no regulation tends to breed low quality knock-offs that cheapen the image.

For this to happen, one of two things must be true:
1) The devices do not conform to the standard
2) The standard is not sufficiently well defined (e.g. specified tolerances are too loose)

Re:Widely adopted?

[BitZtream]

An open standard does not mean it is a no cost standard. Just because RMS. has. Mad you a freetard doesn't mean you get to redefine the language.

Re:Widely adopted?

[Anonymous Coward]

All but the misuse of "happy medium" is fine.

Re:Widely adopted?

[Anonymous Coward]

My understanding was that the S4 doesn't come with Qi built-in. Did you buy a third-party back for it?

Re:Widely adopted?

[cbope]

USB charging sucks, although it is ubiquitous. The vast majority of USB ports in use are USB 2.0 or older 1.1, both of which have limited current capacity (500mA). This is inefficient for charging, it's simply not enough juice to quickly charge anything with a decent sized battery. Sure, there is USB 3.0 which has a higher current capacity, but USB 3.0 ports are not nearly as widely available.

Wireless charging on the other hand is a great idea. In fact, I see wireless charging being built into desks and other furniture in the future. A simple routed cavity where you can drop in a charging plate will start to become the norm for technology furniture. I use my Qi-enabled Nokia with wireless charging daily and it works great. I have a charging plate on the table in my kitchen, and I just place the phone on the plate when I get home. It stays there and is continually topped off when not being used. When the phone rings, I just pick it up and I can walk around without having to worry about charging cables.

Wireless charging points are starting to become common here in Finland in restaurants and cafes. Also, the Helsinki airport has them everywhere, almost every restaurant/bar has charging points in almost every table. If you have a phone that does not have Qi built-in, then you can get a "ring" which has a micro USB plug, and charge practically any modern phone. It's hugely convenient. I was recently at the airport with a friend who has an iPhone5, and he was complaining about the battery life. I just pulled out my Nokia and placed it on the charging point and topped off my battery (which, by the way, lasts WAY longer than his iPhone5 battery). His options were to ask the bartender for a charging ring or dig out his charger and try to find an empty socket... (try that in any airport, many times it's almost impossible).

Re:Widely adopted?

[OolimPhon]

Yeah, sort of. Look what Apple did to USB with its chargers.

Re:Widely adopted?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not in Airports around the world.
The humble power point is being removed, replaced by single locked in the floor varieties.
How dare freeloaders get something of value for free! A lockpick or a double adapter in carry on luggage is invaluable in cattle class waiting areas, and in some cases hand baggage portable scales. Should you encounter a locked up power point that cant be liberated, return the courtesy.

Removing the powerpoint and clipping on a low value high wattage resistor is a neat way to punish airport owners. If not use a nail file to trim pins and wafers or sprinkle in cement powder or a Mc'D's packet of salt erosion enhancer.

Re:Widely adopted?

[drinkypoo]

Networking went wireless because wires suck.

It's a safe bet that once we get the technology down, power will go wireless, too. Because wires still suck.

USB still has wires, it's not the future, it's the present. Pretty much all phones have had a standard connector since, oh, 2010? The EU has a law about it now, right?

Well that sounds positive

[Neil_Brown]

What bright spark came up with the idea of this merger?

Perhaps we could have one charging company merge with another time after time after time, thereby doing it in series.

Re: Well that sounds positive

[peragrin]

What a recharging idea. Companies working together to build a single standard as opposed to fighting each other over basic designs.

Re:Well that sounds positive

[Chris Mattern]

No, they should merge all at the same time, in parallel. That way we don't ramp up the voltage.

Re: Well that sounds positive

[Anonymous Coward]

Except it's two companies working together to oppose another company. There's still no single standard, just bigger companies fighting for market share drawing a bigger line in the sand between them.

Re:Well that sounds positive

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait. Are they tying the not or cutting the cord?

Re:Well that sounds positive

[Anonymous Coward]

You accidentally a k.

And the answer is neither; they're pulling the plug.

Re:Well that sounds positive

[AmiMoJo]

Seems idiotic not to adopt Qi anyway. Lots of devices already support it or can be made to with inexpensive accessories. To Qi enable a Galaxy S3, for example, you just change the back plate and it doesn't even add a bulge because the circuits are already built into the phone (you just need the antenna). To enable it for either of these two systems you need a USB dongle which makes them entirely pointless.

I'm amazed Duracell is still in business. Their batteries are expensive and not particularly good. Nobody wants their proprietary rubbish.

Re:Well that sounds positive

[adolf]

re: Duracell quality.

In the pro audio spectrum, new Duracell alkalines are used for wireless accessories. At the end of every show, they're disposed of (or most likely hoarded for other purposes). At the next show, new Duracell alkalines are used again.

Why not use rechargeable batteries? They wear out, inconsistently. It's difficult to tell (without a lot of human-time) what the status is, and the voltage when fresh is never as high .

Why alkaline and not heavy-duty or lithium? Because they're consistent, and there's no advantage to lithium (they're expensive).

Why Duracell alkalines? Because they're even more consistent.

Wireless microphones and such are fickle enough without having to worry about one bad cell out of a six-cell 9-volt battery ruining a show.

Just sayin'.

Re:Well that sounds positive

[CoolGopher]

Ohmy, I'm having a hard time staying current with all these technologies. Maybe I'm getting old and resist change too much?

Re:Well that sounds positive

[Anonymous Coward]

Ohmy, I'm having a hard time staying current with all these technologies. Maybe I'm getting old and resist chaRge too much?
Fixed that for you.

Re: Well that sounds positive

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that they have 2-cell Li-ion 9V batteries, which do much better than the rightly despised NiMH & NiCd ones. Capacity is better, open-circuit voltage is a reliable indicator of charge state, and the internal resistance is much lower. There's still applications, including most professional audio work, where the cost of fresh alkalines is cheap compared with the risk of failure from rechargables, but the Li-ion 9Vs really make sense for a lot of applications where previously the alkaline or lithium primaries were once the only sane choice.

Re:Well that sounds positive

[tlhIngan]

In the pro audio spectrum, new Duracell alkalines are used for wireless accessories. At the end of every show, they're disposed of (or most likely hoarded for other purposes). At the next show, new Duracell alkalines are used again.

This is common in other fields as well where there's often a safety-critical element - there will be primary cell backups, and it will be stocked with brand new batteries every few months. Even if all it's done is been removed from the package and stuffed into cell holders and sat on the shelf for months - after a few months, it's removed, the batteries replaced with new ones. The old ones usually get moved for other purposes (or donated to the local children's hospital). Of course, the instant they're used, they're marked for replacement.

Likewise, anyone that values their equipment tends to do the same - when I flew R/C aircraft, the battiers were carefully monitored - after an hour, they were replaced regardless. It was the policy of the equipment owner - so we all chipped in a pack of batteries and claimed the lightly used ones afterwards.

Re:Well that sounds positive

[AmiMoJo]

It's interesting that you should mention consistency because that is exactly the problem we had with Duracell alkalines. They were fine until they came to the end of their working lives. Our product needs to signal that the battery is about to die and needs to be replaced, but about 50% of the cells would be unable to get this last message out over 868MHz wireless. The choice was either to send the message earlier and thus reduce battery life or send it later and risk not having it sent at all.

Their lithium hybrid cells were even worse. In the end we went with SAFT, but are looking to switch to a Korean manufacturer whose name I forget. Anyway, Duracell didn't perform well.

If you want consistency and quality then Japanese batteries are best, e.g. Sanyo, Toshiba or Panasonic. Eneloops are extremely consistent for rechargables or you can just go with their ordinary alkaline ones. They are not cheap but they are extremely dependable.

Of course, YMMV, especially since I've noticed that Japanese manufacturers seem to be the target of fakes so at least with Duracell you are fairly sure you are getting what you asked for.

Re:Well that sounds positive

[adolf]

That's all fine and good, and I appreciate the input, but:

Real Duracell batteries are ridiculously easy to get. Non-fake Japanese cells are not.

And I cannot account for what seems to be a design fault in your gear: If the "about to die" signal fails, that's more a problem with the circuitry and/or logic surrounding that event than of the particular battery that is installed....no matter what particular battery is installed. (Draw yourself a flowchart.)

My mileage doesn't matter. The entire pro-sound industry is standardized on Duracell, because they always work in this application. For one show. That's all that is asked of them, and all that I claimed.

Re:Well that sounds positive

[AmiMoJo]

The problem with the end-of-life signal is that some batteries die gracefully and can provide enough current to send the message, while others do not and the voltage drops dramatically as the 30mA required to transmit kicks in. The voltage is then below the minimum level for the transceiver and the message fails.

As I said, about 50% of Duracell batteries are okay, and 50% are not. 100% of SAFT batteries are fine. We also tested Sanyo and Panasonic, bother of which were fine but more expensive than the SAFT cells. For us Duracell had quality issues.

I suppose in the application you describe where the cells are not run to end of life these things don't matter. I'm not surprised that Duracell are easy to get in the US, but in other countries they are very expensive or not available at all. Japan is all Japanese brands and the UK seems to get the worst of both worlds. None the less for our products with user-replaceable batteries we recommend Panasonic because genuine ones are easy to get here and they work reliably at -10C (some of our customers are in Norway) and +40C (some of our customers are in Saudi Arabia and Iran).

One other thing we like about SAFT and Panasonic batteries is that they do proper datasheets for them. With Duracell and Energizer you get a couple of pages with vague graphs, but other manufacturers provide hard numbers measured under realistic conditions. It's not surprising really because Duracell are consumer grade batteries aimed at the consumer market, where as SAFT and Panasonic do industrial grade cells for customers who need that kind of information.

Re:Well that sounds positive

[tlhIngan]

It's interesting that you should mention consistency because that is exactly the problem we had with Duracell alkalines. They were fine until they came to the end of their working lives. Our product needs to signal that the battery is about to die and needs to be replaced, but about 50% of the cells would be unable to get this last message out over 868MHz wireless. The choice was either to send the message earlier and thus reduce battery life or send it later and risk not having it sent at all.

Different use cases - if you must absolutely positively ensure the battery is working, you do not use them to end of life. You use them to a reasonable extent then replace them early - the "used" batteries can be used in purposes that do not require sustained life.

That's why pro-audio, life-support, and other critical industries replace practically new batteries often and after every use. Even if the thing they're in gets 10 hours on a set of batteries, and you only used them 1 hour, they replace them with fresh brand new ones.

It's rather wasteful, though you'd find non-critical uses for the used batteries fairly easily. If not, the local children's hospital generally takes them on donation (kids love their toys, and having a ready supply of batteries for them ...).

Likewise, your "battery is dead" message would have been a last-gasp message - you should've sent out plenty of notification at the 75% and replaced it at 50% (which gives you a margin to get to the device). Last-gasp messages are possible as well - you just need to design your power supply to gracefully handle it. (You know, SSDs are doing this now when it was revealed a great proportion of failures Is because the FTL tables get corrupt - so enterprise SSDs and more high end consumer ones are coming with huge banks of capacitors to hold enough charge to flush caches and write out pending data)

Re:Well that sounds positive

[AmiMoJo]

We do send regular battery voltage measurements but we use a lot of lithium cells that remain at a fixed voltage until the very end of their life. Alkaline have a nice curve but even so you really need to know when you are over the "knee" and really dying rather than just having temporary comms trouble because a vehicle parked between your base station and data logger.

But yes, different applications. We go five years on a couple of AA cells.

Re:Well that sounds positive

[adolf]

The problem with the end-of-life signal is that you have a device that accepts random off-the-shelf batteries, but cannot reliably detect when they're near the end of their life.

I strongly suspect that it could be improved. I'm guessing that it measures open-circuit voltage, or close to it, which is the wrong way to measure a primary battery since the internal impedance can be quite high: Open-circuit voltage is a lie for all practical purposes. These things need tested under load.

So how to test it under load without destroying capacity? Simple: Presumably, the device has a transmitter that operates periodically. Near the end of each normal transmission measure the voltage while the thing is still transmitting and the battery is thus still under load.

If the voltage at this point in time is below threshold, then immediately send an EOL signal. Done. (What is "threshold"? Whatever value it is that is safe with Joe Random Battery, even if that is a UK-sourced Duracell.)

Obvious software optimizations include then setting an EOL bit in RAM and skipping the voltage check until the device is reset, and transmitting EOL as a single bit with every message thereafter.

That all said...

In the US at retail, we get three types of alkaline batteries: Duracell, Energizer (randomly-manufactured crap), and Other. (Where "other" might be Rayovac or a store brand.)

Panasonic? Nope. Even though electronics that have NVRAM still ship with Panasonic lithium coin cells, the US-centric 2025 replacement says Duracell on it.

SAFT? Nope.

Sanyo? Sometimes their batteries come as freebies in remote controls for Asian-built goods, but I can't get them here. They do seem to work forever, though...

I can order whatever I want, of course, but dealing with US-based distributors usually seems to mean that the batteries have been sitting around for eons and have self-discharged substantially by the time I get my hands on them...and directly ordering from a reliable distributor in Japan is just a bit far-fetched for the quantities that I need.

Re:Well that sounds positive

[AmiMoJo]

The problem with the end-of-life signal is that you have a device that accepts random off-the-shelf batteries

No, it accepts brand new SAFT cells that we buy in and fit ourselves. They are never more than 2 months old. We can reliably detect when they are near the their end of life because the voltage starts to drop (adjusted for temperature and under a known load). At that point we always have enough energy left to send a several end-of-life messages over a few days.

The problem we had with the Duracell batteries was that when they reach this stage some of them can't supply the energy needed for these messages. SAFT always can, but Duracell are hit-and-miss.

Note that these are lithium batteries. We had a similar issue with most cheap alkaline batteries too, and to be fair Duracells were some of the better ones. It's less of a problem when you can just set the cut off voltage a bit higher (at the cost of some capacity).

Or zed

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

> Qi (pronounced "chee")

I watch Dragon Ball Z. Shouldn't it be pronounced "Kai"?

Re:Or zed

[xaxa]

It's Mandarin for life force or energy.

The older way to write the word using Latin letters gave "chi" (and "Peking"), the newer way "qi" (and "Beijing"). It's pronounced like the "chee" in "cheese".

Re:Or zed

[Molochi]

I think it's the Qinese pronounciation.

Re:Or zed

[gl4ss]

> Qi (pronounced "chee")

I watch Dragon Ball Z. Shouldn't it be pronounced "Kai"?

I'm Finnish.
I'm wondering how the fuck one is supposed to pronounce "chee". Is it like cheetah/cheater? chjii? khii? khaaaaaan!?? khee? is the sshsh there or not?

For the record, it would all be so much simpler if everyone just started speaking Finnish. Once you see a word in 99.9% of cases you know exactly how to pronounce it. This is the reason for rally english spoken by Finnish rally drivers, they just pronounce the words like they're written. Very simple, very effective and generally you don't need writing the word two times, first as it is written and then next to it with phonetic symbols - that's fucking stupid if you think about it, why not just write it with the phonetic symbols in the first place.

And Beijing is Peking, darn it. Never mind what the Chinese have to say about that, they don't know dick about a sensible writing system anyhow (their writing system was never intended for pesky peasants anyhow, just for the one percenters).

Re:Or zed

[alantus]

For the record, it would all be so much simpler if everyone just started speaking Finnish. Once you see a word in 99.9% of cases you know exactly how to pronounce it.

In Spanish you also don't have to guess the pronunciations, plus its easier than Finnish.

But let's get real, no country will ever change their official language just because there is a better one out there. People never think their native language is awkward, because they grew up with it. Ask any chinese and they will tell you that mandarin is the easiest in the world.
At some point in history Esperanto was seen as a possible universal language for all countries to adopt, unfortunately the plan failed.

Hell, we can't even agree on a standard measuring system (metric vs imperial) or current standard (110v / 220v 50hz / 60 hz).

Re:Or zed

[Anonymous Coward]

The current English renderings for Mandarin are unintuitive at best. Better under the old scheme at least. I recall there was a newer more accurate scheme proposed but it was rejected by the DRC because it made sense, therefore it was politically unacceptable.

Re:Or zed

[xaxa]

The current English renderings for Mandarin are unintuitive at best. Better under the old scheme at least.

I don't speak more than 20 words of Mandarin, but I didn't find Pinyin too difficult. There's a few letters to learn, like Q, but that's no different to any language.

I'm in Poland at the moment, and I think that's more difficult. I have learned that W is pronounced V, is pronounced W, there are a few vowels with cedillas which /. probably can't cope with, C is like SH, so is SZ. Wrocaw is "Vrotsh-lav", Szczecin is "shchet-chin" (the shch like in pushchair).

I recall there was a newer more accurate scheme proposed but it was rejected by the DRC because it made sense, therefore it was politically unacceptable.

Sounds like anti-Chinese prejudice, frankly. They use Pinyin to teach children, and to type, not only in the PRC but Taiwan and Singapore.

Re:Or zed

[Anonymous Coward]

My native tongue is English, and I find this aspect of the language annoying. But it's not entirely English's fault, per se, it's really on the person who decided to introduce this word into English, and felt it was SOOO necessary to maintain this weird-ass spelling that doesn't even closely resemble the pronunciation.

That person could have easily introduced the same word with the spelling "chee". I wonder why they chose to add to the list of words that confuse native speakers and foreign speakers alike?

Time to calm down

[EmagGeek]

Look, there's no reason to get all amped up over this merger. Qi is clearly leading the charge in the market, so in order to offer any resistance, Duracell had to do this. The field is very dynamic and variant right now, so let's just hope that once it settles down to one dominant technology, it doesn't go all stagnant and stop working altogether.

Re:Time to calm down

[viperidaenz]

Yep, unless Apple puts Powermat technology in their phones, it'll never take off. LG, Samsung, Motorola, HTC, Sony, Nokia and Huawei all use Qi.
Are any phones compatible with powermat out of the box? None of their "partners" on their website manufacture anything battery powered.

Re:Time to calm down

[lxs]

Knowing Apple they'd invent their own standard, call it Skypuppy and claim that Qi is not advanced enough to power their magical appliances.

Lisänäkyvyyttä!

[Dogtanian]

For the record, it would all be so much simpler if everyone just started speaking Finnish.

Just as long as they didn't *write* it, else there'd be a world shortage of those double-dot umlaut things. :-/

Human studies?

[Anonymous Coward]

What human studies have been done into the negative health effects of "wireless power charging"?

Re:Human studies?

[aXis100]

Considering that the feild only extends a few millimetres between the charging pad and the receving antenna, I'd say none.

You're on a tech website, use your brains and have a rational think about it. Inductive charging is the same as a two transformer coils, slightly seperated into the base and device instead of wrapped on the same former. They would be using high frequencies to minimise the number of turns required on the coils, maybe as high as several hundred kHz.

This means any potential EMF leakage is well below the RF level, and non-ionising.

Re:Human studies?

[tompaulco]

What human studies have been done into the negative health effects of "wireless power charging"?

It's so ridiculously inefficient that it can barely charge a cell phone sitting right on it nevermind cause any health issues.

USA vs USB

[Anonymous Coward]

1500 power charging points in the entire USA? whatever next, device chargers that plug into normal power sockets, or cables that connect to a computer and charge your device?

Well....

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a totally pointless idea anyway, And will fail. Nuff said.

Conflict of Interest?

[Chrontius]

I recall that PowerKiss is Qi compatible. It says so right on the store page.

PowerKiss Rings are a clean and easy way to charge your phone wirelessly. Chose the perfect match for your device from two different types of Rings (micro USB and iRing). Available in Jealous Black or Innocent White. With the new Qi compatible Rings you can simply plug it into your device and charge it on:

PowerKiss Heart2
any Qi compatible pad or station!

Oblig.XKCD :

[RockDoctor]

Standards!

I'm surprised that no-one appears to have got there before me. Unless someone is using particularly obscure spelling for "obligatory". Or for "XKCD".

Re:Oblig.XKCD :

[CaseCrash]

I hate you.

Re:Oblig.XKCD :

[RockDoctor]

Feel free.

Why?

(hint : I don't treat /. as meaningless bullshit. Do you?)

Does this mean...

[Genda]

So should I expect that a technology is going to become ubiquitous that might play hobb with people's pacemakers???

Should I be expecting to see Grandmas all over the country breaking out into unplanned gymnastics at airports, malls and coffee shops? I can see it now, Lady ordering at a Starbucks... "I'll have whatever she's having!"