The future of wireless charging will not involve charging pads, and there is a race between hardware vendors to make that happen first. Several companies have for years promised to charge wirelessly without making contact, and some even demonstrate prototypes at technical shows like CES. Today, Xiaomi unveiled a technology demo of its “Mi Air Charge” charging technology, but Motorola also debuted its own work today on non-contact charging.
A Motorola driver went to Weibo today to share a video showing a prototype remote charging station with the trademark ‘Motorola One Hyper’, not to be confused with the same smartphone. In the video, which we embedded below, he shows two smartphones charging over distances of 80 cm and 100 cm. These smartphones look like the Motorola Edge, but it’s unclear what changes have been made to them.
The video continues with a demonstration of how charging stops when someone’s hand is placed in front of the charging station. This shows that Motorola designed the system to stop charging when it detects that someone is moving in front of the station, probably for health reasons.
Unlike Xiaomi, Motorola apparently did not share additional details about how its wireless charging technology works without contact. While the company teases users on Weibo by asking them if they want to see the technology in a future Edge device, they have not confirmed whether they are ready to bring it to a commercial product. The implementation and structural issues you have to overcome are well understood, so we definitely want to learn how Motorola approaches this issue.