Ikea recently announced plans to release a line of furniture with built-in support for wireless charging, allowing you to drop your compatible phone on a table, desk, lamp stand, or other surface to recharge the battery without plugging in a cable.
But not only will you be able to buy furniture with charging pads built in, Ikea will also help you add wireless charging to your existing furniture. Just buy a $30 Jyssen charger and a $5 drill bit and you can cut a hole into your desk, drop in the charging pad, connect it to a power source and get started.
Don’t like the idea of drilling holes? Ikea will also sell wireless charging pads that you can place on top of your furniture instead of within it.
Ikea says it’s wireless charging products will be available in US stores this spring.
The store’s products all use the Qi wireless charging standard, which isn’t the only game in town… but it’s once of the most popular. Even if your phone doesn’t support the Qi standard, Ikea might have something for you though: the company is selling a line of charging cases for select iPhone and Samsung Galaxy models.
I don’t get wireless charging. Seems like jumping the shark. Why not just have proper docks? A dock can hold your device at a better angle and charge it. But docks seem to be non-existent for the last two Android phones I’ve owned.
The best argument for it is wearing out your micro-usb jack, I’d say.
Ever since I had my first Blackberry in 2005, it was the 7290 I think, it came with 2 batteries in the box and for the first few seconds I was thinking maybe they made a mistake. I shortly thereafter realized the immensity, of the genius, behind the 2 battery system. I have never owned a phone with a non removable battery since, and I can’t imagine I ever will. I’ve bought spares for all my main phones and I use a Chinese battery charger with adaptable pins to charge the other cell/s, so I always have a full spare that I can just pop in and be on my merry way. This wireless charging nonsense is pushed down the industry’s throat, because Big Bro is pressuring handset manufactures to slowly fade out support for removable storage and detachable batteries, and it might be just a bit to uncomfortable to have you keep your device in the wall every 8 hours. Hence the elegant and casual “put it on a table” routine.
I guess there are not many of us left. I too will not buy a phone unless it has removable batteries and expandable storage (microSD). I usually keep my phones a long time 2 – 3+ years and batteries do get weak. Replacement batteries are usually dirt cheap too. My previous daily use phone is now my media player for the car. It may go another 2 or 3 years. Try 5 – 6 years with a phone without replacable batteries!
You are not alone.
Batteries wear out with time. If you’re going to replace your phone every year or so, soldered-in batteries aren’t that bad. I used my last phone for nearly 4 years. In the end, the built-in charger in the USB port failed (while I was on vacation, no less) and the only way to keep using it was to keep a second (or third) battery, an external charger and swap batteries. I got sufficiently proficient at it that I could do that, without looking, in the dark, while driving in traffic. One hand for the wheel, one hand for:
1. getting the phone out of its case
2. getting the back off
3. getting the depleted battery out
4. finding the contacts on the charged battery
5. aligning the charged battery in the phone
6. putting the back on the phone
7. putting it back in the case
8. boot the phone
Flash also wears out, depending on how hard you use it. With enough write cycles, you do get bad cells in there after a while. While Android isn’t very good at determining when part of the built-in flash in your phone has gone south, being able to move apps off the phone’s flash and into an external SD card is another useful feature for keeping that thing working, long-term. And if enough of the SD card goes bad, you just buy/install another one.
I have worn out an SD card. That was an old, Windows Mobile phone on which I ran Android 1.5, 1.6, 2.01, and 2.2 (xda-devs to the rescue; tried 2.3 but the poor little 800 MHz CPU in that phone just wasn’t up to the task). The only, actual, Android phone at the time was the G1 on T-Mobile and I was on Sprint. I was running Android entirely from the SD card, using the heck out of it and upgrading to newer versions as soon as they were available. Personal data on the card was backed up on a regular basis. When Android would no longer boot, because sufficiently large sections of the card were returning corrupted data, I just bought another card, did a fresh install of Android on it, restored any personal data from backup, plugged it into the phone and got on with life.
Having had these “adventures,” I will not buy any device without a removable battery (HTC One M8 and M9 were eliminated, as a result; too bad) or a removable SD card. I got years of good, solid use out of my HTC Droid Incredible 2, thanks to those features.
I wonder what the impact of wireless charging is on battery life. But perhaps it doesn’t matter because Joe Consumer makes no effort at battery maintenance hygiene anyway.
The best maintenance hygiene for lithium batteries is to charge them as often as possible… They are not nicads that have a memory, etc… The more you drain li-ons / the deeper the charge cycle, the more wear you put on them…
No, Kary.
Don’t know why anyone would give up portability anyway. Dropping my phone on a small coaster-like disk is no big deal. I usually keep one plugged into my PC and another on the kitchen counter. But I can also easily drop it into a bag/backpack for travel…
Personally, I think wireless charging is stupid, because I don’t have that big of a problem simply plugging in a USB cord. But my question was more aimed at avoiding ruining a piece of furniture by putting a hole in it for technology that might not exist in 5 years.
“Personally, I think wireless charging is stupid” Right, until Apple does it
i like wireless charging, because sometimes I forget my phone is plugged in and I pick up the phone too fast and the connection is ripped out pretty forcefully, which can’t be good. I’ve also had 2 phones where the connector wore out after about a year.
Wireless charging is great but I wouldn’t be drilling holes in furniture. Future standards will allow charging through 1 inch or so objects (counters, tables, desks, etc). I wish all my mobile devices had wireless charging but right now it’s just my LG G3.
I like the idea of Wireless charging, but I will have to be convinced that it is just as energy efficient as cord-charging.
What I like most about the idea of wireless charging is that it doesnt add wear/tear to my MicroUSB connector.
I am currently using a Note 2, it is a little more than 2 years old. The Microusb connector is beginning to wear out. It will only make connection in certain positions. I am definitely seeing the merit in wireless charging.
I’ve got the Note 2 as well. If it’s any help, Amazon has Qi tags you can add into your Note 2’s battery cover to enable wireless charging. They’re about ten bucks or so each. I think they’re compatible with all variants except Verizon’s.
Wireless charging is less energy efficient than cord charging, there is no dispute about that. The advantage is the convenience.
the convenience would be an argument if you could just drop your phone anywhere on your table and it would charge. But with those things where you have to carefully place your device +-1cm on the right spot?
I simply don’t get why that should be more convinient than a docking-station or similar.
Oh yes: “because you could charge any device with it!” – yeah. because that is something people do. /s
Some wireless chargers are better than others; some include magnets etc.
My personal experience: wireless charging makes a home tablet 10x more useful. It is irrelevant for phones. (I used 10x more times my HP touchpad with wireless charging station than my current tablet. (both ran android.) It’s just too cumbersome too keep in mind when to charge a tablet, but it’s also annoying to plug it every time after I used it for just a minute.)
Wait until you break your USB port by jamming the USB cord end in the wrong way. Then we’ll have something to talk about. (I’ve never broken mine myself but thousands do it all the time).
Not too worried. First, I never force anything. Second, I put a slight bend in the cord so I know which way is right.
Is it not possible to mount it under the table? Stated differently, will wireless charging work through a 1/2 inch board?
yes, it will. Intel wireless charging technology will support that. It rolls out this year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reDkEesnTpE
I just tested, and my Qi charger (Nokia one) probably has a max range of 0.25″ board + thickness of a thin case, so I’d say 1/2 inch board might be too much for it.