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Powermat marries PowerKiss, vows to use same wireless charging standard

Kevin C. Tofel — Tue, 21 May 2013 14:27:05 +0000

Travelers between the U.S. and Europe have one less barrier to deal with when it comes to wireless charging a mobile phone or tablet. Powermat, a joint venture with Duracell, and Helsinki-based PowerKiss reconciled their differences and became one on Tuesday. The two wireless charging companies previously used incompatible technologies, but are both committed to the PMA standard and will be combined under the Powermat Technologies name.

Between the two, they have more than 2,500 wireless charging installations at public locations such as airports, coffee shops, malls and arenas. PowerKiss recently added some charging mats at select McDonalds Europe locations. The idea behind these installs is to allow customers to place their mobile device on a wireless charging pad and add juice to the battery. Of course, the device has to natively support wireless charging, such as Nokia’s Lumia 920, or be compatible with an add-on product such as a wireless charging cover.

Overall, the ability to recharge a device by placing it on a special mat really hasn’t taken off with the mainstream public. Part of the reason is a battle over the technology standards: If you have a device that supports wireless charging but doesn’t work with a compatible charging mat, you’ll have to plug in your device, of course.

Powermat Technologies is part of the PMA, or Power Matters Alliance, which boasts that 80 percent of its partner members represent the entire wireless install base. That sounds good, so what’s the issue?

Well, there’s another body, the Wireless Power Consortium, that’s been at this longer than the PMA by about four years and uses the Qi-branded standard. Even worse: Some partners are members of both groups. So while the PMA gained a new member through marriage, there are still plenty of fish in the sea using a different wireless standard.

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2013 Toyota Avalon jump-starts wireless phone charging in cars

Kevin C. Tofel — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 15:22:25 +0000

Although wireless charging of mobile devices hasn’t yet become mainstream in the home or office, it could be on the road. The 2013 Avalon Limited model is the first car to natively support this: Toyota is adding a wireless charging pad in the car as part of a technology package. With the option, drivers and passengers can place a supported phone on the small console pad for a recharge during travel.

Phones that support the Qi wireless charging standard can be used with the pad. Nearly three dozen such phones exist, including the Google Nexus 4, Nokia Lumia 920, and HTC Windows Phone 8X. Third-party manufacturers, such as Energizer, make Qi-enabled sleeves for Apple’s iPhone, which would work as well with this charging pad.

While I’ve heard some valid comments that Qi-enabled wireless chargers aren’t truly wireless — since the pad itself has to be plugged in — placing this technology in an automobile simply makes sense.

There is no pad to plug in as the wireless charging surface is integrated into the vehicle and draws off the car’s power. And as someone who has more charging cords, cables and adapters in the car now, I’d love to see other auto makers follow Toyota’s lead here by integrating a standards-based wireless charger in a car.

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Zap! 8.5 million devices support Qi’s wireless charging

Kevin C. Tofel — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 15:42:50 +0000

Recharging mobile devices without plugging them in is becoming more attractive as additional devices support wireless charging technology. On Tuesday, the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) announced that 110 consumer electronic products are supported with a global installed base of 8.5 million. Ranging from phones to tablets to game controllers, the future of wireless charging looks bright as consumers use more devices but don’t want to deal with the hassle of plugging them all in on a regular basis.

According to the WPC, the 8.5 million Qi devices are comprised of 6 million in the U.S., 2 million in Japan, and another half million in Korea. Helping the WPC’s efforts is the Qi standard. Manufactures that integrate wireless charging via Qi specifications allow their devices to be recharged by placing the unit on any charging mat or pad that also uses the Qi standard. This alleviates the hassles of buying a different charging mat for each device, making the solution more attractive to consumers and hardware makers alike. Clearly, this is working because the number of Qi devices has doubled in the last 7 months alone.

The interest in wireless charging is sure to grow as it becomes a new feature on phones and tablets. For example, Nokia is expected to announce two new phones tomorrow that will support the functionality. Speculation based on Apple patents have some thinking the next iPhone will also include wireless charging. And last week, Intel announced plans that support wireless charging of phones from a computer. Plus there are third-party options such as this one (shown left) for the Samsung Galaxy S III.

But for real growth in this market, here’s what I’m envisioning: Furniture with the charging mats built in. Don’t laugh: Jay-Z’s 40/40 club is halfway there with wireless charging mats installed at the tables, according to Bloomberg!

Watch this video for free on GigaOM

I’m not suggesting that every chair or table include a Qi-compatible charging mat. But I would like to see integrated wireless chargers where we keep mobile devices the most. Think desks, nightstands or coffee tables, for example. If you’re going to put your phone down on these pieces of furniture anyway, why not have your handset recharge at the same time? Hmm … I think I just found a new use and weekend project for our old coffee table.

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Oh, no: not another wireless-charging group!

Kevin C. Tofel — Mon, 07 May 2012 19:17:38 +0000

Over the past few years, wireless device-charging solutions have come and gone, never really becoming the promised holy grail of ease and convenience one would hope. In theory it sounds great: Just drop your gadget on a little mat, which itself is plugged into an outlet, and your phone or MP3 player sits there and charges away.

So what’s the problem? Too many cooks in the kitchen, as different companies back different standards. The latest effort is a brand-new group called the Alliance for Wireless Power, or A4WP.

On Monday Samsung, Qualcomm and Powermat Technologies announced the newly formed group, which is also backed by Ever Win Industries, Gill Industries, Peiker Acustic and SK Telecom. According to the A4WP press release, here’s the goal:

The independently operated organization’s mission is to promote global standardization of a wireless power transfer technology that offers spatial freedom, to develop product testing, certification and regulatory compliance processes, and to foster industry dialogue with regulators on wireless power policy development. The alliance is targeting a broad base of consumer electronic devices to establish a worldwide wireless power technology ecosystem.

The A4WP will focus on a new wireless power transfer technology that provides spatial freedom for charging of electrical devices in cars, on tabletops and for multiple devices simultaneously.

Now consider this “about us” blurb from the Wireless Power Consortium, which was formed in 2008 and has 100 members:

The members of the Wireless Power Consortium cooperate to make it possible that their mobile phones can charge wirelessly on each other’s chargers. Proprietary and incompatible chargers are a waste. Consumers get the most from wireless charging when their phone can charge everywhere. That is our dream. An open standard, free for all to download, easy to implement with broad support from the entire industry.

Aside from the A4WP bit on spatial freedom and more types of devices mentioned, it sounds to me like we already have a wireless-charging standard: The WPC backs a standard called Qi, and ironically after a few years of using proprietary technology, Powermat actually joined the WPC and backed Qi just last year. Samsung too is currently one of the 109 WPC member companies.

So what gives here? The only reason I can see for the new group is that Samsung, Qualcomm and Powermat feel the WPC efforts to be too limiting. It’s not just phones that these companies want to charge wirelessly but tablets, cameras and gadgets in cars, perhaps. Either that or Powermat sold Samsung and Qualcomm on its own proprietary technology, which uses custom device backs and/or batteries to provide the wireless-charging capability.

Either way, more groups trying to do the same basic thing is bad for everyone. There’s a reason we use standards for communications, wireless networks and even electricity. Trying to break out different ways to wirelessly supply electricity to a nearby device only fragments the products and confuses both the market and consumers.

Don’t get me wrong. I loved the Touchstone wireless-charging dock for my old Palm Pre in 2009, but for all of my other devices, it was as effective a charger as a hockey puck would be. One-off charging solutions specific to a certain device or a particular brand of device don’t add value. Perhaps to the device manufacturer they do, at least in the short run, but it’s bad enough that our devices are locked in by apps. Let’s not cut the cord and be locked in by how we get electricity to them too.

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Finally, Wireless Phone Charging Gets Easier

Kevin C. Tofel — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 15:29:45 +0000

Chances are, you plug that smartphone, tablet or other mobile device into an outlet at least once per day. The promise of wireless charging is supposed to make this an easier task: Just place your device on a charging pad to juice up the battery through magnetic coils. The theory is sound and it does work — Palm’s Touchstone charger from 2009 is a great example — although the charging pad itself must be plugged in via a wire. So why then hasn’t this solution, called inductive charging, taken off? The biggest challenge has been a lack of device compatibility, but Energizer is taking advantage of a new standard in the hopes of bringing wireless energy to handsets everywhere.

The standard, called Qi, was created last year by the Wireless Power Consortium, currently comprising 81 companies. Qi eliminates obstacles from proprietary wireless solutions because any device with the Qi logo can can be charged on a Qi mat, regardless of the device manufacturer. Without such a standard, consumers have to purchase device-specific cases that work only with charging pads from the same manufacturer. For example: an iPhone 4 charging case made by company A won’t work on a charger made by company B. The Qi standard eliminates that problem by making Qi-compatible devices interchangeable across products made by different manufacturers. (See: 10 Things to Know About Wireless Power)

So Qi solves the problem of using wireless charging cases with different manufacturers, but there’s still the issue of device-specific cases. As it stands now, if you switch from an iPhone to a BlackBerry device, the Qi case from your old handset won’t fit the new one, for example. Energizer’s answer to that problem is a new Qi-compatible Micro/Mini USB adapter, which it will be showing off later this month. The adapter will attach to the back of virtually any handset and uses the fairly standard micro and mini USB ports found on most phones to get wireless power to and from the mat to the handset battery.

This generic approach is sure to use some wire to route energy from the adapter to the phone, but that’s a small price to pay for the freedom of adding wireless charging capability to nearly any device. And it makes sense, given the recent adoption of micro USB as the universal charging method for phones. With the Energizer adapter, nearly any modern phone could gain wireless power. Now if we could just get our increasingly capable phones with multiple radios to easily get through a full day on a charge, we’d be in business!

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