Apple may have struggled to get its AirPower charging tray to work for more devices, but just over the horizon is a new technology that promises to make wireless charging truly wireless, and Xiaomi is the latest company to promise a world without charging cables – we just do not know when it will really arrive.
Wireless charging in its current form is definitely convenient as it allows you to simply put a device such as a smartphone or headphones on a road to charge the battery without having to go to a cable. But at the same time, it is also restrictive, and requires you to leave a device on a desktop or side table only until it is loaded. Truly wireless charging is the ideal solution, because as long as you are in the same room as a wireless power transmitter, charge your phone no matter where it is, even if you are still using it in your hand.
It sounds like total science fiction, but the technology exists, and in 2016, a company called Ossia demonstrated working prototypes of its Cota wireless charging system at CES. A Smartphone (upgraded with a special case) can be held anywhere in the company’s booth and it will continue to load indefinitely. Xiaomi today announced its own wireless charging ecosystem called “Mi Air Charge Technology” which apparently offers similar features (and limitations) as Ossia’s Cota technology.
Instead of wires or a few aligned magnetic coils, Mi Air Charge uses a transmitter (which is about the size of a portable air conditioner) with antennas that both accurately determine the location of a device and then use beamforming to ‘millimeter- to broadcast. wide waves ”there. A separate smaller number of antennas function as a receiver in another device, which converts the wireless signals into about 5 watts of power.
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Xiaomi promises that the system can power multiple devices at the same time, whether it is a smartphone, a tablet, headphones or even a pair of wirelessly powered batteries, such as Ossia also demonstrated a few years ago it ensured that legacy devices never needed a new pair. Distances are still limited to a few meters, or about the size of an average room, but the technology is not hampered by physical obstacles, so the greasy power transmitter can be hidden out of sight.
It’s exciting to see more businesses announcing wireless charging solutions like this, because it helps legitimize the technology, but alas, to date all we really have are announcements. Since its debut at CES 2016, Ossia has not been launched a wireless charging product available to consumers. And Xiaomi’s announcement today does not even contain vague promises about how long it will take the company to make its Mi Air Charge Technology available outside of its own R & D labs.
There are major challenges to making this technology safe and reliable, and unfortunately it is not backwards compatible. To move forward, Xiaomi may include the compact antenna receiver array in its future smartphones, but your iPhone does not work with the system without a special chest of drawers, or Apple agrees to play nicely with Xiaomi. There is little doubt that wireless charging will one day be commonplace – we may even be able to cover entire cities with wireless power instead of needing a transmitter in every room of a home – but for now, it still remains nothing more than a teasing technology demo.