Samsung Unveils the First Monitor That Can Wirelessly Charge Your Phone

An anonymous reader writes: Samsung wants to reduce the number of cords in your house and has unveiled a new monitor that can wirelessly charge your smartphones. Called the SE370, Samsung says the monitor is the first of its kind to have this capability. The monitor comes in 23.6-inch and 27-inch sizes. According to Samsung : The SE370 "declutters work areas by doing away with unnecessary cables and ports needed to charge mobile devices. Along with superior picture quality, enhanced visual performance and thoughtful design, the monitor seamlessly integrates advanced technologies that offer both professionals and consumers an optimal viewing and usability experience."

Comments

Brilliant

[Mr D from 63]

We stuck a wireless charger on a monitor stand. And the world will never be the same.

Next up, first toilet tank with wireless charger.... now THAT would be a real advancement.

Re:Brilliant

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember, kids: Any advance that isn't revolutionary is worthless and stupid.

Re:Brilliant

[Bengie]

Japan has had issues in the past with toilets catching on fire. I don't think we need more of that.

Re:Brilliant

[kheldan]

Samsung Unveils New Energy-Wasting Monitor
Electric companies quoted as saying "Cool!".
Inverse square law unavailable for comment, rumored to have slit it's wrists.

Re:Brilliant

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The trouble here is that the rest of the monitor is pedestrian as all hell(gosh Samsung, 1920x1080 on a 27 inch screen! I can practically taste the future...) and the presence of the charging widget in the stand suggests that you aren't going to be VESA mounting this one. If you really care about 'de-cluttering', you are much better off having your monitor float conveniently above your desk, not being stuck with the lousy stock stand.

At least the color scheme is atrocious.

Re:Brilliant

[Darinbob]

No, it's not hard. People just don't care. They want the latest cool thing, NOT the latest smart thing. It's a huge waste of power but who cares because they haven't had a brownout in a few years so as far as they know electricity is an infinite resource. Remember, these are the same people who buy a phone and then throw it into landfill after one year (ok, the "green" people will give it to a recycler who will then put it in the landfill on their behalf). Being smart is a social liability, but it's ok as we're breeding away those undesirable traits.

Re:Brilliant

[Firethorn]

Hmm... I sense marketing opportunity - come up with a fancy premium stand - wireless charging, usb ports, height/tilt adjustments and all that. Have it 'universally' connect via the VERSA mounting.

Maybe even have a right/left speaker version. ;)

Re:Brilliant

[Firethorn]

It's not that they 'don't care'. It's that people value their time, and it takes time to fiddle with a USB plug. Just making it so it wasn't keyed would have helped, after that you just have the issue of the clutter of the cable.

With a wireless charger in the base of the monitor, I can toss my phone where any alerts are visible, just grab it(with more charge than it would have otherwise) when I go to leave, etc...

Re:Brilliant

[Ol Olsoc]

No, it's not hard. People just don't care. They want the latest cool thing, NOT the latest smart thing.

I think the wireless charging will be as important as curved televisions a big meh. Some folks will buy a charger, then discover they need a number more. We'll not always going to be in the same room with the phone, and instead of the crimes upon humanity horror of actually having to plug something in, you'll have an invisible tether to a nice big monitor.So you get a wireless charger for other rooms. Then they'll need their regular charger, unless they want to lug around the wireless one.

A serious amount of trouble just to avoid plugging in a wire.

Yeah, it'll probably be big hit.

Re:Brilliant

[bemymonkey]

I'd like a wireless charger in, well, pretty much every surface everywhere at work and at home and in my car.

Re:Brilliant

[Misagon]

Another way that makes it look dated is that the aesthetic design has glossy white and translucent blue plastic is like a 1999' Apple iMac.
Maybe someone at Samsung has nostalgia for those. I really don't.

It appears that this monitor is a very small update of last years' S29D390H with a new stand. That screen has got pretty bad reviews for its build quality.
The stand does not only lack a VESA mount, it is not height-adjustable either.

It has AMD FreeSync though, so I suppose that the intended target demographic is gamers.
For gaming, the resolution is good enough. (BTW, screen resolution is measured in pixels-per-inch, not pixels per total: that is video resolution)
For desktop work in 2015, I agree that it is not.

...actually that's kinda cool.

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

I was going to deride this thing as a pointless combination like a refrigerator/toaster kind of combo. When I saw the phone on the stand I looked at my own monitor. Realized my phone is sitting there with a cable plugged in...

Re:...actually that's kinda cool.

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

There's money to be made by traditional phone manufacturers here. I typically rest my phone up against (checks) some sort of Polycom desktop phone, which I've never used and still has its peel-off plastic on the status screen. If only that could charge my phone from the Polycom instead of it uselessly taking up nearly a square foot of valuable desk space.

Re:...actually that's kinda cool.

[binarylarry]

And as beta testers of Samsung's new monitor found, it adds a nice tingley feeling to your skin.

Re:...actually that's kinda cool.

[silas_moeckel]

Still want a VoIP desk phone with a Qi charger, bluetooth cellphone and headset connectivity. Something where I could charge my phone, use the better handset/speakerphone of my VoIP phone and a bluetooth headset. A perfect world would also allow multiple phone ringing for inbound calls, some contact sync, and possibly calendar/task sync as well.

Re:...actually that's kinda cool.

[Coren22]

I know likely you are making a joke, but I highly doubt you would ever feel any kind of tingle around a QI charger. I have one a foot from my pillow, and have never had any issue.

Re:...actually that's kinda cool.

[BenJeremy]

I looked at my own monitor and... realized none of the 5 monitors in my home office have stands, because they are wall-mounted. Also, all of the monitors I have purchased in the last 2 years have been WQHD (2560x1440) resolution, not 1080p.

Putting a charger in the stand might be useful for a certain percentage of their customers, but it is hardly earth-shaking and revolutionary, particularly when such a device could just as easily be decoupled from the monitor completely as its own device, thus eliminating the need to have your whole monitor serviced if that one doo-dad malfunctions.

Integrating an unrelated component into the monitor is really quite useless. Better would have been to make the stand less obtrusive so a charger could easily fit below the monitor. Likewise, I don't really need a USB hub or network switch build into my monitor.

About the only usb functionality that would be useful would be a built-in KVM switch, with enough ports for keyboard, mouse/trackball, audio, web cam and a headset.

Now... if the charger also somehow wirelessly allowed your phone to interface to the screen... you'd have something, but we won't see bluetooth-like connectivity to displays for a probably five or six years down the road, at least.

Re:...actually that's kinda cool.

[Drethon]

I was going to deride this thing as a pointless combination like a refrigerator/toaster kind of combo. When I saw the phone on the stand I looked at my own monitor. Realized my phone is sitting there with a cable plugged in...

Depends on the range, if I have to stick it right up under the monitor I'd rather just have a wire keeping the phone out of my way.

Re:...actually that's kinda cool.

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Are you saying that you don't need the wireless, or that adds something to your life.

I love wires and cables. They work in the many nine's reliability wise. Wireless is taking a limited resource and wasting it on something a wire does perfectly well. But more importantly, it only works like 70% of the time.

Re:...actually that's kinda cool.

[hypergreatthing]

You know they have qi chargers and stands that are like 15-50$ that do the same thing. It's nothing new. It's not as if these were similar things that needed to be combined.
Might as well put a mountain dew dispenser on a monitor and call it a revolution.

Re:...actually that's kinda cool.

[hypergreatthing]

Now... if the charger also somehow wirelessly allowed your phone to interface to the screen... you'd have something, but we won't see bluetooth-like connectivity to displays for a probably five or six years down the road, at least.

Ohh you mean like this http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/smart-grid-gaming-software,3622.htmlgaming keyboard does since 2013?

Re:...actually that's kinda cool.

[Bengie]

All of my $130 gaming monitors that I've purchased in the past year are 1080p. $200 is my general max for most any single part of a computer, with a bit of give for important parts. eg Maybe $220 for a CPU or $250 for 512GB SSD instead of a $180 256GB

Re:...actually that's kinda cool.

[Drethon]

Well for WiFi, the available bandwidth means if I see a 50% reduction I'm still way over what my ISP can possibly provide. Also I don't really want to run Ethernet over the back of my couch or to the dining room table (or the toilet...) or may other places I find it convenient to develop software at during different times of the day.

Re:...actually that's kinda cool.

[Vitriol Angst]

I really think you are onto something with that combination Refrigerator + Toaster idea. There's heat being pushed out and wasted already, and that could be concentrated and used to brown bread, or at least warm some water.

Samsung makes appliances like these, and should really jump on the Chimera appliance bandwagon. Curved screens, Toaster + Phones, Toasters + WiFi. The marketing is easy; "We only sell hot stuff."

Re:...actually that's kinda cool.

[Darinbob]

So, keep the cable. Cables are good. Except maybe for the people who think cordless mice are a good idea, because we just can't have enough batteries in our landfill. Conspicuous consumption goes hand in hand with conspicuous waste.

Re:...actually that's kinda cool.

[Sowelu]

Rechargable batteries last longer than the devices you put them in.

Re:...actually that's kinda cool.

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Sure, for things where you move them around a lot, that may make sense for data connectivity (they have a battery). That's a special case. This is something where it's tethered to four inches from the mat anyway. And tons of people want their desktops, etc. to be wireless because it looks cool at the cost of, well, everything.

Re:...actually that's kinda cool.

[sims 2]

That's actually a great idea a cordless mouse with a wireless charging pad you could even disguise it as a mouse pad.

Now that you point it out it seems like a obvious application for the tech

Re:...actually that's kinda cool.

[AmiMoJo]

I think you are confusing wireless charging with wifi and other data transmission protocols.

I find Qi charging is very robust and reliable. No need to wear out the USB port and cables, just put the device down. Some poorly designed devices/chargers need careful placement, but the better ones are happy just to be dumped on the charger.

Wireless charging doesn't use up any useful wireless spectrum. It's relatively low frequency and very short range. Or perhaps you mean the wasted energy due to wireless charging only being ~70% efficient. Well, I'd argue that it's probably better than the wasted energy that went into making cables and devices that end up broken with wired charging. You can probably offset it by simply remembering to turn the charger off when not in use anyway, or in a monitor like this you get savings due to the power supply being dual purpose and thus more efficient (switch mode PSUs are more efficient under load).

Re:...actually that's kinda cool.

[Coren22]

I have done that with 2.4 GHz antennas before. They make your skin crawl. This is because 2.4 GHz reacts strongly to water (it is Microwaves after all). This is a property you would not want in a wireless charging device as you lose too much power to the water in the air.

Re:...actually that's kinda cool.

[lexman098]

So put this on your monitor stand. Universally works with all monitor brands!

Great!

[Skiron]

I haven't got a phone :( I suppose I better buy one then.

Qi

[krakass]

Between Samsung and Ikea putting their support behind the Qi standard, maybe we'll finally be able to declare a winner?

Re:Qi

[sims 2]

I am still waiting on one that charges by room or just within 5 to 10 ft of the charger.

Anything less just seems a waste.
I mean if i have to set it on top of the device why not just plug it in?

The only way I would accept the current range is if the device was totally sealed by which I mean submersible min 300ft and by necessity used wireless charging

Re:Qi

[Coren22]

On top of what the AC said, which are all valid points, QI also enables waterproof design. No one has yet (as far as I have seen) removed the plug, but you could do so. You could also leave the phone in a waterproof case if it is thin enough and charge it right through the case. It is really nice to charge my cell phone by just dropping it into a stand, no need to hunt for wires, no need to figure which way the plug needs to be plugged in, no need to worry about damaged connectors or cables, just drop it and charge.

Re:Qi

[crackerjack155]

5 or 10 feet is a waste.

How much power do you have to radiate to get useful amounts to a phone 5 or 10 feet away?
Inverse square law?

It seems like you could save a lot of power and get a lot more distance if you make a directional wireless charger that automatically senses the phone and the location of the phone and sends the power just to the phone and turns off when the phone is either charged or removed from the room.

Current omnidirectional and always on chargers waste a lot of power and can't add more distance without exponentially increasing the power output.

Re:Qi

[sims 2]

I have seen some nice life-proof cases but i have yet to see one that is like you said waterproof as in you can take it diving with you...no i don't expect it to get service under water but i do expect it to still work after being 30ft underwater for an hour...300ft would require a phone redesign I think the pressure would crush the phone through any case that would support a touch screen.

Would be great to bypass the usb micro connectorsI have seen several devices with those broken off (dell venue) or so loose as to not work (kindle fire) so overall I really hope this gets to be a standard feature.

Its something would be happy to use but not something I would pay extra for.....unless the standard charger has one of those annoying high pitched whines like the casio ravine 2 and the wireless charger was silent then I would pay extra for it. Or if i could get one of those nice waterproof cases I would absolutely pay extra for that!

I only charge my phone about twice a week.
I have a iPod touch that gets charged every night though.

Re:Qi

[Khyber]

" within 5 to 10 ft of the charger."

My god the amount of power you'd waste just to get a usable bit of power several feet out is staggering.

Not to mention - you'll kill your devices faster because wireless charging makes more heat - which kills batteries.

Stick with a wire.

Re:Qi

[Coren22]

I can't see any reason to take the phone with you diving, I took my Kyocera Brigadier out on the boat diving in the DR, but I left it on the boat. I did however take my camera down, and actually went to 10 M with it. I was amazed it survived at that depth, but it made it back.

http://www.amazon.com/Fujifilm...

It looks like the new version is rated to 15M, but I could swear the version I have was rated to 10 Ft, and it survived 10 M.

No usb ports.

[sims 2]

Way to go all in soldier!

No usb ports so those other inferior devices can gtfo.

Re:No usb ports.

[mspohr]

I really don't see any need for any plugs or ports on a smartphone. I haven't plugged my phone into anything for at least a year.
It charges wirelessly, backs itself up wirelessly and communicates (WiFi, cellular data, NFC, Bluetooth) with everything.
Why would I ever want to fiddle with a plug?

Re:No usb ports.

[sims 2]

I would happy if they removed all the ports and made them permanently sealed preferably by o-ring for screen replacement but epoxy would be good too for cheaper phones.

Water damage should be a thing of the past.

Re:No usb ports.

[Darinbob]

Encase those phones in a block of solid quartz. Even better if the quartz is opaque.

Re:No usb ports.

[sims 2]

We haven't quite gotten to the point were we can make phones out of plates of glass/quartz like the ones in those cool looking scifi movies but with transparent conductors we may be able to get close within the next few years.

Re:No usb ports.

[Darinbob]

I didn't want it transparent, I just wanted the phones unaccessible so that the users could do something useful with their time instead of staring at the phones.

Re:No usb ports.

[sims 2]

Hey I personally wouldn't mind much if it didn't have a screen at all just a keypad I can work with that

Re:The important question

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> How long does it take to give me cancer?

Depends if you're a lab rat in California or not.

Does this work for any phone?

[rossdee]

or just for some yet to be released model from Samsung

And does the 27in monitor do 1920*1200

Re:Does this work for any phone?

[silas_moeckel]

It is Qi so most will work it's pretty much the winner. It's only 1080P (ish since it uses AMD's sync protocol). It's a PLS panel so none of the IPS goodness.

Pretty much is a fairly meh monitor with a qi charging puck shoved into the base they are literally a few bucks added to the BOM.

Plenty of people have modded bases, keyboard, desks etc etc etc to add qi charging this is just a cheap gimmick to try and make a meh monitor look cool.

Re:Does this work for any phone?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a PLS panel so none of the IPS goodness.

You realize PLS *is* IPS, right?
LG owns a trademark on IPS, which is why Samsung calls it PLS, AUO calls it AHVA, ...

Re:Does this work for any phone?

[RockDoctor]

It is Qi so most will work it's pretty much the winner.

Care to back that claim up with some stats?

I've never seen any wireless charging technology in the wild, so I've literally no idea which one of the standards is likely to be the one that wins. From wiki-ing, I get that there are at least Qi,

Open Dots, a competing wireless power standard promoted by the Open Dots Alliance
PMA / Powermat, a competing wireless power standard promoted by the Power Matters Alliance
Rezence, a competing wireless power standard promoted by the Alliance for Wireless Power
WiPower

All of which leads me to the inevitable XKCD.

I've chosen VL-bus over PCI ; SCSI over IDE ; parallel port over USB (1.0), I dodged the HD-DVD versus Blu-Ray question by realising that neither offered any real (to me) use case. I see no reason at all to dive into another standards war until all bar one of the competing standards are dead on the field of battle.

Just checking if my current phone has a wireless charge capability - it's that invisible a technology ... well, that's a surprise - my phone (Samsung, by coincidence) actually does have an official Qi-charging alternative back cover (or flip case). That's vaguely interesting. Since I'm travelling over the next few days for business, I'll see if I can actually spot the charging places. See if they're common enough to actually be a useful discriminator (i.e. let's coffee there not here, because there has Qi pads available and here doesn't.

Re:Does this work for any phone?

[silas_moeckel]

Open dots it's not wireless rather a contact layout.

http://www.eetimes.com/documen... it pretty clear at this point the only one with any market penetration is Qi.

VL-Bus predated PCI to market being the way to connect vid cards in the 486 days, PCI come out with the pentiums. SCSI was better and still is better, servers are still using SAS and most SATA devices use the SCSI protocol over the SATA bus. I can not think of a case where parallel ports vs usb was a choice maybe later generation zip drives.

In any event I do not see a whole lot of public wireless charging ports. Starbucks being the big one but they are using the powermat devices.

Re:Does this work for any phone?

[RockDoctor]

Back from my trip. Didn't see a single wireless charging point, so it's a null consideration at the moment.

In any event I do not see a whole lot of public wireless charging ports. Starbucks being the big one but they are using the powermat devices.

There was a Starbucks at one of the airports, but with 7 minutes to make it from passport control to my gate, I didn't investigate. We'll have to remind the booking minions that an hour is not long enough to make it through an airport, even without added security.

The feature I want in a monitor is ...

[Old97]

a little rumba that comes out and vacuums up the crumbs from my desk and keyboard. If it also tossed my old napkins and put out new ones it would be perfect. Wait, what about a beer & wine cooler and a little arm that would serve me a fresh one or a refill? Innovation!

Re:The feature I want in a monitor is ...

[PopeRatzo]

a little rumba that comes out and vacuums up the crumbs from my desk and keyboard.

Make it look like an official NHL hockey puck and I'm in for 2. Or, combine a miniature Roomba with a quadracopter so it could just hover over my desk and suck up the dirt. Wait though, I guess if it's hovering it's pushing air down and all that's gonna do is blow the dust everywhere and irritate my eyes and sinuses. OK, forget that last one. But a quadracopter that could vacuum up dust (if it was physically possible) would be cool as hell, and it would prevent my cat from trying to sit on my keyboard all the time because my cat hates those miniature quadracopters. I mean hates as in wants to kill them but is too scared to do anything but run under the furniture and hiss and growl.

Wait, what about a beer & wine cooler and a little arm that would serve me a fresh one or a refill? Innovation!

Or a little quadracopter that would freshen up my drink when it sensed the fluid level in my glass got below 20%.

There's got to be something I can do with a miniature quadracopter besides terrorize my cat.

Waste of resources

[Anonymous Coward]

Wireless charging is way to inefficient, and this is purely an esthetics's thing.. Bad idea even if some people do 'want it'... Should be banned like they do incandescent light bulbs; since the masses are too stupid to know better... At least with light bulbs in the north the wasted energy helps heat the home, these things just throw it off into RF..

Re:Waste of resources

[Darinbob]

It's not as bad as it could be. While charging it seems to be efficient, as good as wired charging at least. Most of that efficiency is not from the induction charging but rather from better design of power supply, so you're relying on the manufacturers actually paying attention to efficiency. What's hard to determine is what is the power leakage when the system is not used. Is it better than a wall wart (remember people, unplug those when not in use), how much power is used to detect if there's a phone or not, will manufacturers even bother to turn off power if no phone is detected, yada yada.

The QI literature is 99% about convenience, that's their end-consumer marketing spiel, and the 1% time that they pay attention to efficiency is hard to track down. This is all amazingly consumer oriented (as in "buy me", "consume me", "be the first on your block", "stop thinking for yourself").

Re:Waste of resources

[Blaskowicz]

I don't unplug my warts. It's not your 1990s power bricks : they stay cool to the touch, well at least the USB ones.
I could use a switch on some power supplies (no, I rarely want to kill a whole power bar or a couple nested ones)

Re:Waste of resources

[CanadianMacFan]

I certainly miss those incandescent bulbs heating up my home on these 30+ degree days in July. /s
 

Blame your phone

[holophrastic]

So, you remain in one place, silent, immobilized, inactive, and unconcious for 6 to 10 contiguous hours each and every single day of your life. But that's not enough down-time for your phucking phone.

Maybe, just maybe, you should throw out your shitty phone, and get one that can last as long as you can.

Efficiency?

[FrozenGeek]

I've been wondering about this wireless charging business. It has to be less efficient than wired charging. Given the current push to reduce energy use, I'm at a loss to understand how people can be pushing wireless charging.

Re:Efficiency?

[thegarbz]

I'm at a loss to understand how people can be pushing wireless charging

Who cares about the tiny tiny drop of energy efficience that is abandoning wireless charging when you can save many orders of magnitude more power by swapping out one incandescent bulb for an LED.

It all comes down to a cost / benefit. The benefits of wireless charging outweigh the energy costs for those of us who find our cable messes borderline unbearable.

Re:Efficiency?

[AmiMoJo]

Qi charging is usually around 70% efficient. It's a trade off between efficiency and the energy wasted due to having to replace cables and devices with broken charging ports. Overall it's probably neutral.

Re:The important question

[sims 2]

Yep most everything causes cancer in California.

Lab rats here in Oklahoma don't get cancer from anything for instance lead is perfectly safe just ask anyone in Picher.

(Picher is home to the Tar Creek Superfund Site just fyi)

declutters work areas

[codeButcher]

I've also got an idea to declutter picnic areas and make picnic hampers less bulky to carry: rather than packing a table cloth and napkins, leave the napkins at home and use the corners of the table cloth to wipe your mouth.

Instead of a convenient _plug_ on the monitor ?!

[fygment]

So instead of putting a convenient outlet on the monitor to efficiently charge your phone ... you now get an inefficient remote charging device spewing more RF in to the atmosphere to inefficiently charge your phone/device _if_ it has the remote charge capability?

In an era worried about the big bugaboo of 'climate change caused by man', we find yet more ways to inefficiently use resources and so contribute to the problem. How ridiculous. So screw it; saturate your home with remote chargers, leave appliances and lights on all the time, get a pool and run the pumps 24/7, turn your A/C on always, and let your car idle when you do your shopping ... and join the others wondering how we can combat climate change.