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Silicon Valley youngster Pi on Monday claimed it had developed the world's first wireless charger that does away with cords or mats to charge devices.
Pi chargers, about the size of a small table vase, operate on standard charging technology used in Apple or Android smartphones designed to be powered up wirelessly.
But instead of cords or mats, the conical creation charges smartphones with magnetic waves.
Magnetic fields are an ideal way to safely send energy to portable electronics, said Pi chief technology officer Lixin Shi, who co-created the charger with John MacDonald.
The trick was bending magnetic waves to find smartphones, the co-founders said during a presentation for an AFP journalist at the TechCrunch Disrupt startup scrum in San Francisco.
[...] The pair figured out how to shape the magnetic field so energy could be beamed to smartphones placed or in use within a foot of a Pi.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Fluffeh on Wednesday September 20 2017, @12:02AM
Yeah, that's the thing I look at here and wonder about. If the thing has a range of a foot or so, it's not really any better than a mat which I just plonk my phone on to charge it. If it has some real range to it - and can charge within a meter/yard of range.. it's going to fry anything metal trying to touch it. Even of it was smart enough to "point" the magnetic waves in the right place to focus on a point, surely the direct line between it and the phone itself are a no-go zone for metal circles of any shape/size.