[Moof_in_Charge]

you just provided a list of marketing bullet points.
The fact is, as compared to a wired connection these will waste more electricity to charge a device. It's not me talking, it's physical properties of materials. Electricity travels great in Gold, works itself down to Copper. Whatever other material you throw in between ...(Ie Air, water, etc....) will only slowdown its impedance.
9. Do I need to turn off the pad when not in use?
No. When its not in use, the pad automatically switches to a standby mode.

What do you think Standby is? Where do you think it's getting the power to stand by idle? So while it's not used, it's using some power.
I happen to know a thing or two on batteries and the charging process. As it stands, a good portion of the electricity used to charge up the battery goes to waste. As wireless stands, a better portion goes to waste.
Does wildcharge waste power is a Horrible question, something marketing would conjure up to mask a shortcoming.
As compared to a wall charger, how much of the electricity used in the process is actually stored in the device? Then you'll see the horrendous ill effect of these polluters.

[MacTechAspen]

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As compared to a wall charger, how much of the electricity used in the process is actually stored in the device? Then you'll see the horrendous ill effect of these polluters.

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Wall chargers waste a huge amount of energy through heat. These alternative chargers do not. I would want to see some actual math before I accepted the claims you have made. Especially as you seem to think that induction will be hampered by impedance from air.

[Moof_in_Charge]

>>>Wall chargers waste a huge amount of energy through heat
This is a terrible statement. Wall chargers are varied a great deal. There are efficient ones and there are inefficient ones. If you think the process of reducing 120 Volts down to 9 volts is not going to create heat with an induction charger then you maybe ignoring physical properties of materials.
As it stands your cell phone charger is most likely using about 1 or 2 watts per hour while not in use. this is very inefficient for sure but that is because the manufacturer has elected to produce this waste of a product to save a few pennies.

[doglesby]

Thank you, I was going to make the same point. Especially in light of advice from this very publication about unplugging chargers when you're done charging.
Remember the first R is Reduce.

[doglesby]

To be fair a standard (mini-USB) is arising. I know all new Motorola phones will use it and other companies are doing the same. You may have a universal charger soon (just in time to go wireless according to this article).

[doglesby]

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But pessimists, including Yours Truly, fear the main purpose might be locking out non-Apple products from getting in on the easy charging, or preventing users from charging Apple devices on non-Apple chargers.

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The first option makes no sense. Apple would prevent other devices charging on its chargers for free? It costs Apple nothing and increases the value of its chargers. The second option makes sense, but what happens if the battery is already dead? How can you perform a hand shake if the battery is dead an you locked out inductive charging? The syncing makes much more sense. If you want a pad to sync your iPhone or iPod, get the Apple sync/charge pad (which can charge any inductive device). Now you have to get the Apple unit if you want to sync. Who needs lock-in when you can provide more features?

[myoung]

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you just provided a list of marketing bullet points.
The fact is, as compared to a wired connection these will waste more electricity to charge a device.

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Which you would have noticed had you read my whole post is exactly what I said myself after listing the marketing material from their website. I thought the bullet points from the faq might shed a little light on where these companies stand on the power consumption issue, but as I also pointed out they still do not answer how efficient wireless charging will be compared to current wall adapters.

[Netizen_Kane]

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Wall chargers waste a huge amount of energy through heat. These alternative chargers do not. I would want to see some actual math before I accepted the claims you have made. Especially as you seem to think that induction will be hampered by impedance from air.

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Where do you think these wireless chargers will get their power? From AC adapters! The wireless part is nothing more than how the power gets from the charger to the device. You still need a transformer and rectifier to get power from the wall outlet. Or do you think handheld devices can operate directly on 110V AC? Just look at the pictures of those chargers. Do those look like thick AC cords to you?
There's no "thinking" about it. Any electrical engineer can tell you that the conversion of electricity to EM fields back to electricity is intrinsically very inefficient compared to just piping the electrons in on wires. That's basic physics. Every conversion step brings losses. And the larger the air (or plastic or other dielectric) gap, the greater the losses because EM fields weaken over distance.

[VidPro]

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Are you telling me that with all of these companies working on this technology - that they are actually all going to agree on which subset is best and make a "universal" charging pad like you describe? Have we learned nothing from VHS vs Beta, HD-DVD vs BluRay, and any other competing standard in the world? Heck, if it were so easy for them to get along, why isn't there just one (or even just a few) standard cell phone charger right now? It wouldn't be that hard for everyone to make their phone to use one charger. But they don't. It's not in their best interest - they make money off of those accessories... and will continue to do so no matter what the new technology is.

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How many Beta VCRs have been sold in the last few years? None, and you know why? Because the market picked a winner (as it will eventually with BluRay vs. HD-DVD). If this technology becomes cheap and easy to access, there will be a HUGE financial incentive for companies to add support. Put it this way: let's say Nokia makes a phone that supports wireless charging or wired charging; Motorola makes one that only supports wired charging. Consumers see enough of an advantage and "wow" factor to desire wirless charging and they buy the Nokia. Nokia makes more profit, etc.

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But of course, Motorola will make its own wireless charger, so you are back to square one.
Note, also, that chargers have been around longer than BetaMax, so how long before in your view, the market will decide?

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The phone industry is a cutthroat one; anything that can give them a leg up on their competitors is good. You're right, they don't all standardise on one wired-charger plug design, but that's because there's no advantage of plug A vs. plug B. But if I have a wireless charging pad there's a MAJOR advantage of wireless charging over wired, so it's a desirable feature and I'll look for it on my next phone. Companies that don't support it will lose my business.
Put another way: you point out that every phone company has its own connector for its chargers. This is true. But guess what? They all adhere to one standard when plugging into the wall (well, one per country anyway)-i.e. the three-pronged 120V 60Hz plug in North America-and one standard for car plug-the 12V DC round plug. They all connect to a computer via either a single wired standard (USB) or a single wireless one (BlueTooth). Why? Because of IEEE/ISO standards and the market forces have pushed them to standardisation. If such standards and market acceptance comes of wireless power, I don't see this being any different.

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Once again, each company will make a wireless charger that is different in some way, for example frequency, at the device end, and of course will plug into the standard wall outlet. How will this be different from current (no pun intended) practices?

[whitedog]

In the use of any tool, electrical or otherwise, there are two sources of efficiency and inefficiency: the designer/manufacturer and the user. Most of the arguments on this thread so far merely highlight the strengths and weaknesses of each. Personally, I won't worry about how efficient my device chargers are until people stop buying - and driving - gas guzzling SUVs. One of those can waste more energy going a mile than I waste with all my chargers in a year.
As for standards, the organizations that set them don't appear out of thin air. They are either created by the industry that applies them (as has happened with various internet technologies), by national governments (and different governments have traditionally adopted different standards) or by some combination of private and public agencies.
Lest we forget, the very first standards battle in the history of electricity was between the developers of AC (Nikola Tesla) and DC (Thomas Edison) current. And both standards, though they have evolved significantly, are still with us. Each has its value and preferred applications.
In the United Kingdom people still drive on the "wrong" side of the road. And the U.S. is just about the only country that does not uniformly use the metric system of weights and measures.
In other words, standards are, as they have always been, various and controversial. Business alone is not to blame for these differences. It's in the nature of technology that it changes continuously. Today's standards are tomorrow's antiques. Standards make things simpler but they don't always make them better. They have their own inertia and can actually impede progress, as they now do with our outmoded IP addressing system.
It may be inefficient in some ways, but the marketplace is often the best arbiter of standards. USB was around for awhile before Apple adopted it but it was not until Apple did so that it became popular and ubiquitous. The same goes for FireWire. On the other hand, Apple was slow to incorporate CD burners in their computers; it was competition that forced them to do so. Likewise with the move from expensive SCSI internal hard drives to more economical IDE drives. And it was the market - and the availability of appropriate technology - that forced Apple to switch from PPC to Intel processors.
Which technology makes for the best TV? Plasma, LCD, projection? The market will decide. They all use (waste) less electricity than the standard CRT.
Back on topic, I think more or less universal chargers are on the way. Already you can get models at Radio Shack that sense the voltage requirements of attached devices within a given range. They include adaptors for multiple devices. As for wireless chargers, it's rather premature to complain about their shortcomings when they don't yet even exist. They certainly have great potential for improving, or at least simplifying, charger technology. As for syncing devices like an iPod, I suspect there are performance issues yet to be resolved, like consistent signal quality and transfer speed. Time will tell.

[sandbag1]

All you self righteous hypocrites, get rid of your Macs and go back to an abacus, a pencil and paper pad, you make me want to barf!!

[MacGod]

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But of course, Motorola will make its own wireless charger, so you are back to square one.
Note, also, that chargers have been around longer than BetaMax, so how long before in your view, the market will decide?

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There's no need for the market to decide based on current wall chargers, but there is with wireless ones. You're misunderstanding the fundamental difference between times like video format/connector format, etc. (where the market decides) and things like wall chargers, where it doesn't. It's all about how strong the advantage is to co-operate.
In the case of wall chargers, most consumers don't really care if each device has it's own charger, because it's generally one device per charger. You have one phone, one charger (and maybe a car power-plug charger). For most people, this charger rarely even moves (I know I always keep mine plugged in to the same plug and just connect or disconnect my phone to charge it). So, there's no big advantage (realistically) to having a single standard. If I had several phones, and only ever needed to charge one at a time, a standard would be desirable, because then I could plug any phone into the same charger. But that's not the case: even if I do have multiple phones, I probably need to charge more than one of them simultaneously at some point; therefore, I'd need more than one charger, and we're back to one charger per device. The two are basically coupled.
This varies from areas where there is standardisation. The wall sockets, for example, need to be a standard shape and supply a standard voltage. Because I need to be able to use any number of devices with a given plug. Similarly, I will use many different tapes with my VCR over its lifetime (though only ever one at a time), so having a standard is valuable. In this case, one device per tape makes no sense; I'm not going to have seven different types of VCRs to watch seven different movies, whereas I have no problem having seven chargers for seven devices.
Now, into which category does wireless charging fall. I hold that it's the latter. Because if you have a pad that can charge multiple devices, and if the advantage is that I can just leave these pads all around the house and plunk a device onto it at any point to recharge, the charger isn't paired to the device. Just like the VCR and the wall socket, it's a many-to-one setup. So, at that point, a phone that is able to work with a standardised wireless charging pad is advantageous to me over one that is paired to a given device. Thus I will buy a phone that supports that feature, creating a market incentive for companies to support it.
Another user asked about "when have companies ever joined up to settle on a single standard?" Here are some examples (several of which were also influenced by defined standards issued by government or standards bodies such as ISO/IEEE):
- USB, VGA, Firewire, RJ11, RJ45 (in fact, almost all connectors in use since the early 80s)
- PCI, AGP
- Wi-Fi (notice how even when there were multiple standards, the market selected 802.11b over a?)
- TCP/IP
- Lightbulbs sockets
- VHS
etc. Basically, anywhere that has a many-to-many or many-to-one situation for devices and accessories.
Where hasn't it?
- Some Apple proprietary stuff. The best example is the Airport connector which ONLY works with Apple's cards. No incentive to do otherwise, because one card is paired to one device.
- AC adapter power bricks. Again, one device paired to one adapter
- etc.
Ultimately, in a situation where you use several accessories with a given device, it's advantageous to have a standard. Corporations are not out to screw the consumer; they're out to make money. If they have to screw the consumer to do so, they will, but that's not their primary intent. When more people will buy their product if they adhere to a standard and treat the consumer well, they will do just that.

[wnurse]

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Yeah, but then manufacturers will need to make less chargers and cables, saving energy there to offset it.

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Why would you assume that? Where does it say in the article that devices can use a common inductive charger? More likely, each manufacturer will have its own design, so you'll still need a jungle of chargers for all your devices.

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Did you read the same article that i did?. Did the author not state the benefit of wireless charging is elimination of multiple chargers?. Just like all vhs tapes play in all vhs players, all maufactures will agree on a standard so that you can just buy one charging pad. Hmm, so elementary a thought, a caveman could have thought of it.