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Ikea Unveils Furniture That Charges Your Smartphone Wirelessly
pbahra writes Swedish furniture maker Ikea unveiled a new range of furniture that it says can wirelessly charge some mobile devices. The Swedish furniture giant made the announcement on Sunday at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Ikea's introduction of wireless charging functionality on some of its new furniture heats up the battle for a global wireless charging standard, of which there are currently three, all struggling to become the global leader.
http://xkcd.com/927/
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I am sure this line of furniture will get some name like Nokaard (with two dots over the o).
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I read the title and thought "Gee, why would I want a sofa to charge me for sitting down? How much does a nap cost at IKEA?" I must be tired.
Yippppeeee to electric furniture!!!!!! No Yipppeee to electric furniture charging people!!
Does sitting on a superfluous electromagnetic field for eight or more hours a day really a good idea?
I'd like to see some figures on the amount of energy lost when these devices aren't being used. Then to compare them to the energy wasted by wall transformers when they are idle.
Translation #3, you don't know about the QI charging standard.
It has a command channel for the device to let the charger know it should be charged.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qi_%28inductive_power_standard%29
Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
Can't vouch for Ikea's new couches, but their Karlstad line was designed by idiots. 99% of the skeleton of the couch is made out of real wood (pine I think), EXCEPT the parts that hold the legs, where most of the stress occurs, which are made out of particle board.
Elchock
Have gnu, will travel.
People will quickly tire of using the hex wrench as a generator crank.
End tables and night stands have been coming with USB ports for years now.
Wireless charging is fantastic-- it eliminates effort and wear and tear on all my devices' historical weakness, the mechanical stress on the charging port. I've replaced all chargers I can with Qi chargers.
Alabama and Oklahoma have orgasm.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
And the thing wrong in your post which others have not already pointed out is that many phones come with the ability to add a wireless coil of choice already, even older phones like the 3 generations old Galaxy S3 which has a pair of contacts right above the battery. That isn't even taking into account phones like the HTC One which has had wireless charging since its early models.
"Our new electric recliners have a problem. The contractor used cabling with substandard shielding. These things practically glow."
"No problem. Advertise they now have a 'wireless charging feature. "
Marketing. Is there anything they can't do?
I strongly disagree. The whole idea is nonsense. If there is a failure of the "command channel" in the table, everything I said is correct. Do you trust Ikea to make 100% reliable electronics?
A few days ago, at a store called Dollar Tree, I bought a Charge and Sync dock for $1. Wouldn't a dock be better than buying cheap-looking Ikea furniture, especially since the convenience is minimal or non-existent?
Who would EVER put an expensive phone flat on a table??? That's asking for trouble. It's easy to knock it off.
I'm NOT saying the $1 dock is better. I'm saying that a dock is better than laying a phone flat on a table. (The $1 dock needs a charging transformer, of course.)
Look at the Wikipedia page to which you linked! Quoting: "This article appears to be written like an advertisement."
Air core transformers, especially air core transformers with distance between the primary and secondary, don't transfer much energy. Do you want to wait longer because you bought an ugly-looking Ikea table?
Always has been. And it's been getting 'worse', given the economic realities of the world.
If you're looking for quality, long-lasting furniture and you're in an Ikea, you're doing it so very, very wrong.
So now I have to plug in my coffee table?
I'll have to use an extension cord for that.
A4WP and PMA have merged to form Rezence, which should become the prevailing standard as it's better technology than Qi. So it's really too bad that Ikea is supporting WPC - which will probably not emerge as the winning standard. Ikea can always make next year's furniture with Rezence, but it's not clear first gen customers that got Qi would be able to upgrade. Also the article is misleading in that it suggests Samsung is completely in the WPC camp when they are also involved with and helped found A4WP (Rezence) and believe it's the future.
Ikea proudly announces the first induction-heating sofa.
Slashdot is now often an outlet for angry people, rather than a forum for sensible discussion.
Now you can have all the comfort of a lounger AND a wireless recharger with only a *slight chance of infertility.
*Down from 100% to 99%!
Palm Pre beat them all years ago. I dont understand why it has taken so long for everyone else to offer it.
Good-bye
Great balls of fire.
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When the furniture comes from Ikea, you have to solder the components of the power controller together yourself.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
When cars moved into the home, then we got smart fridges, now the furniture is designed for them instead of use. Soon our overlords will evict us...
It's worth noting though that the channel is unidirectional and not used for evil like the comms in the other two standards.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Wireless charging is slower than wired charging. Why do it?
Yes, cell phone connectors have often been faulty. There is a conflict of interest. Cell phone companies make more money if people buy new phones. The connectors should be improved.
Did someone at Slashdot get paid to run a story about Ikea? Otherwise, the story makes no sense.
And paid huge amounts for it including the 2-year contract.
There are a lot of phones which are cheap, without subsidy:
* Moto G and Nexus 5
* Anything from Oppo
* Anything from One Plus
* Anything from Xiaomi
* Most of the Lumias
Many of those support Qi (I know for a fact that the Google ones and the Lumias do). I also know for a fact that T-Mobile doesnt require any sort of contract for phones, and that most carriers couldnt care less if you brought a new phone on-board.
Finally, for those who dont want to replace the phone, there are add-ons that will add the Qi coils to your phone via USB.
http://www.amazon.com/Wireless...
Palm Pre beat them all years ago. I dont understand why it has taken so long for everyone else to offer it.
Probably because wireless charging sounds like the best thing ever, but in fact is more restrictive than those awful plug-in paraphanelia.
I have these visions of people placing their Ikea chair in their car so they can charge their phones wirelessly. It ends up being a third thing you have to charge your phone.
So unless you never go out of Mom's basement you will need a wall charger, a car charger, and now a wireless charger.
The principles of wireless charging are simple, and could be implemented decades ago. Problem is it just ain't all that. You are every bit as tethered to something as any other charging technology. Much ado about not having to plug in a wire. certainly not all that different from charging docks for handheld radios that have been around forever.
Because when people think of "wireless charging", they think of carrying their phone with them and it automagically charges, wherever they are. Always fully charged, never comes out of your pocket unless you are using the phone The truth is somewhat different. Roughly the same utility as different colored phones. NOt new, and there's a reason they didn't adopt it aeons ago.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Regards your signature, I have not. However, I have seen a program which was designed to control a weapons system which failed causing millions of dollars worth of damage, and which very nearly killed 135 people. The reason? It was written in C++, and used strcat to concatenate two strings. In the constants area, consequently overwriting the constants used by its degrees-to-radians function. Worse, the compiler (under the optimisations that were used) just compiled that without warnings. Finally, what makes this worse still that when I was called in to analyse this incident, it had already been code reviewed by software 'experts' from the contractor and from the Navy - who knew that there was a serious problem - and none of them found it.
People can write egregiously bad code in any language you care to name. But you can write very much more dangerous code in lower level languages, because many classes of error (such as this one) are simply impossible to make in higher level languages. And - as this example shows - code review, even by highly qualified people, will not pick up all bugs.
Yes, this is posted as 'anonymous coward'. I'm breaking the law, even saying this much.
Oh, and, yes, I've also code reviewed control code for nuclear power systems, fortunately catching a couple of major errors before they bit anyone. But can you guarantee I didn't miss any? I can't.
Palm Pre beat them all years ago. I dont understand why it has taken so long for everyone else to offer it.
Because until wireless charging actually is widely available, you can't just use a cable to charge your phone - you need an expensive cable with extra electronics to do so. Rather pointless, unless you want to go completely sealed for a water proof device. Until this happens, support for it in phones is a pointless gimmick. Ikea's move is one of the best things I've heard for the future of wireless charging.
Wireless charging is like Digital Turnip Twaddling. It takes advantage of mistakes people are likely to make.
I'm surprised that an ad for an Ikea table would generate any approval, even among people who like to think they are superior.
Question: Does it work when the lamp etc is turned off (but plugged in)
Also, I really hope they come up with a better design, because while the feature may be desirable, the lamps are butt-ugly!
"Ikea's move is one of the best things I've heard for the future of wireless charging."
Would you buy that Ikea table so that you could use it to charge a phone?
Huh? My Palm Pre Wireless charging base used the standard charging cable that came with the phone to power it. Instead of plugging and unplugging my phone, i jsut set it on the dock, easy-peasy. It even had magnets so it would almost pull it out of your hand and align it. IN my car i had the same usb mini charger i have had for years. Why has it taken so long for anyone else to do this?
Good-bye
Would an Ikea manager know enough about technology to know who is competent and who isn't?
Would you buy an Ikea table because you want to charge a phone? The question makes me laugh.
Translation #1: There is a coil in the table. There is a coil in the back of the phone. The 2 coils act as a transformer with an air core. That only works if you bought a new phone. (And paid huge amounts for it including the 2-year contract.)
Heck, you're right. It's not quite the equivalent of POE for WiFi :-(
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No, I'm not connected yet. I'm at step 8 of the assembly instruction...