Wow, that is pretty neat!

Now this is something I could see being useful in boardrooms or ‘coffee shops’, build it into the table or something that ‘fits in’ and then allow things like laptops/tablets to get their power from it (obviously they need enabling too) without needing to plug in.

I know some places have already done the wireless charging mats so wouldn't be a big change.

Do I like the idea of wireless charging etc… yes, I really liked the feature on the palm tablet that I got and I've always like the drop in charging docks for simplicity.

This device is also an early example wireless power supply which is being worked on for things things like speakers but I'm also curious to what sort of impact the em fields etc would have on a person under long term exposure.

'Beaming' power like this is going to be horribly inefficient. What an awful waste of electricity. Much worse than leaving all your appliances on standby.

Nelviticus
'Beaming' power like this is going to be horribly inefficient. What an awful waste of electricity. Much worse than leaving all your appliances on standby.

That is precisely what I was thinking. what is the efficiency of this tech? Aren't we surrounded by electric wast everywhere already?

Agree that efficiency needs to be considered, but in theory I'm excited about the idea… If you could develop it to deliver enough power for a monitor we could FINALLY see a genuinely wireless desk setup, with one of these powering the monitor, keyboard, mouse and a couple of bluetooth speakers. It's the dream!

The inverse square law means that this will be just horrible for efficiency.

I want the grammar police to nick them for trying to transplant the term ‘beam forming’ in the marketing of a magnetic product.

If Qi is pronounced ‘Chee’ do we pronounce this as ‘Pee’, ‘Phee’ (pronounced with Ph as f, so ‘fee’) or ‘Bee’ (B being 1 earlier in the alphabet as P is to Q). Or is it ‘Pie’, like the Raspberry, in which case they need to be more original.

Still just as pointless as Qi because it has to stay in a small area and can't be lifted to your ear, power efficiency will be terrible and charging so slow.

If someone could make a Qi/Pi compatible mug that would harvest the wastage to keep my coffee warmer for longer then maybe there is a use case…

TheAnimus
The inverse square law means that this will be just horrible for efficiency.

The whole point of this tech is to make the inverse square law not apply.

qasdfdsaq
The whole point of this tech is to make the inverse square law not apply.

Yeah, that's physically impossible. Moreover, after the field clears the distance of the dipoles, magnetic field strength drops off at the inverse cube of the distance, rather than the square. That's why magnetic charging tech is terrible at distant energy transfer.

Not that I know exactly how this thing works, but I find it difficult to believe they're just blasting out a sphere of energy and hoping that something sucks it in, much more likely imo that it connects with each device specifically.

wazzickle
Not that I know exactly how this thing works, but I find it difficult to believe they're just blasting out a sphere of energy and hoping that something sucks it in, much more likely imo that it connects with each device specifically.

It isn't. The whole point is it focuses the energy specifically in the direction devices being charged and not blasting it in a sphere. That's what extends the range from a few millimetres to dozens of centimetres without using any more power.