Sunday, January 24, 2010

Standard for magnetic induction power charging to be agreed in 6 months

[zdnet] A standard for the wireless charging of electronic devices will be agreed within six months, the chairman of the Wireless Power Consortium has said.

On Friday, Menno Treffers apparently promised to eat his hat if the magnetic induction standard, which is intended to provide power of up to 5W, had not been agreed by that point.

The WPC includes members such as Olympus, Nokia, Philips, RIM, Sanyo, Texas Instruments, ST Ericsson, Samsung, Duracell and Energizer.

According to an IDG report, this first standard will cover smaller devices such as mobile phones and cameras, while a further standard will be needed to wirelessly charge larger devices such as laptops.

According to the WPC website, wireless charging is far less energy efficient than wired charging, unless multiple devices are charged from one wireless charger simultaneously. The group claims that two devices being charged at once will use roughly the same energy as two devices being charged separately by wires.

Wireless power standard due 'in six months'

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