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Telecommunications Charge your cellphone from the coffee table?
Telecommunications Charge your cellphone from the coffee table? | Charge your cellphone from the coffee table? |
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| by Stuart Corner | |
| Wednesday, 09 September 2009 | |
  
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With the wireless charging technology envisaged by the consortium users will simply lay their cellphone or other device on a flat pad and power will be transferred by electromagnetic induction without any electrical contact between pad an device, in the same way that an electric toothbrush can be charged simply by placing it on its stand, without any electrical contact between the two. Details can be found on the consortium's web site. "In just seven months the Wireless Power Consortium has advanced the standard to 0.95 for interoperability testing and moved to trademark 'Qi' as the first universal wireless power standard," said Camille Tang, co-chai of the Wireless Power Consortium, promotion work group. 'These significant milestones have been achieved through strong collaboration among the Consortium members and pave the way for an accelerated 1.0 release schedule of the standard." According to Tang, ninety percent of consumers in a five country survey said they would like to see a uniform symbol placed on electronic devices to indicate that the devices are equipped with wireless power charging. Under the Consortium's plans, all electronic devices bearing the Qi symbol will be chargeable on any charging pad or surface marked with the same Qi logo. A significant majority of survey respondents said also that they would upgrade to wirelessly powered electronic devices. The Wireless Power Consortium was established in December 2008. However it has so far failed to attract major handset manufacturers to its membership, which it lists as including ConvenientPower, Duracell, Hosiden, Fulton Innovation, Leggett & Platt, National Semiconductor, Olympus, Philips, Samsung, Sanyo, Shenzhen Sangfei Consumer Communications, ST-Ericsson, and Texas Instruments. The Palm Pre, released earlier this year, is one of the first cellphones to use wireless charging. But according to IMS Research analyst, Chris Schreck. "While proprietary wireless charging implementations offer some novelty for tech enthusiasts, a wireless charger capable of recharging a consumer's laptop, camera, personal media player, and mobile handset offers a much better value proposition to the user. "The nice thing about standardisation is that now, for example, a coffee shop can consider integrating the technology into a table, which would charge your laptop and handset when you sit down. "And one can think of any number of places, from a conference table to an airplane tray table, where wireless power for a portable device would be convenient. A standard makes these scenarios more economically feasible, even if still far off in the future."
This article first appeared in ExchangeDaily, iTWire's daily newsletter for telecommunications professionals. Register here for your free trial.
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