Wireless charging arrives for iPhone and DS Lite

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 04 March 2010 11:20

Your IT - Mobility

The Qi wireless charging standard has arrived in Australia in the form of chargers for the iPhone and Nintendo DS Lite.

The new Olin wireless chargers are the first on the Australian market to include support for the Qi standard, according to distributor Westwell.

[17/03/2010: An Olin spokesperson has advised iTWire that contrary to the information previously provided, these chargers are not Qi compatible. "Olin is heavily involved in the development of the Qi standard which will be available later in the year. They will then release new versions of the current chargers which will be fully Qi compatible."]

Two models are available, one for the iPhone 3G and 3GS, the other for the Nintendo DS Lite.

The idea is to replace the traditional charger and cable with a pad that uses inductive coupling to transfer energy to a device placed on it.

Qi (pronounced "chee") is defined by the Wireless Power Consortium, a group with an impressive membership list including Duracell, Energizer, Nokia, Olympus, Philips, RIM, Samsung, Sanyo, Sony Ericsson, Texas Instruments, and Verizon.

Apart from avoiding the need to mess around with connectors, the Qi system uses an extremely small amount of power in standby mode (ie, when not actually charging a device) - a system using as little as 0.0001 Watt in standby has been demonstrated. This is important for an arrangement that's primarily sold on convenience.

Pictures of the Olin chargers plus more details on page 2.