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?

[OolimPhon]

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

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

[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

[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'.

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: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).