July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Google’s Nexus 4 wireless charger is the coolest accessory that you probably shouldn’t buy.

The device, which is available on the Google Play store starting today, charges the Nexus 4 without having to plug it in. It’s an impressive, somewhat magical hint at the future of gadget charging, and I’m almost completely in love with it.

Almost.

The problem with the device is that there are deal-breaking flaws holding it back. The biggest of these is that the device relies on so-called “induction charging,” which is right now slower than plain ol’ microUSB charging. Google says it should take four hours for the device to fully charge the Nexus 4, which is a bit longer than the roughly 3-hour charge time most Nexus 4 owners are seeing so far.

Compatibility is another problem. While the wireless charger will work with any Qi standard-compatible device, its slanted surface makes that compatibility almost entirely moot. Unless other devices come with the same array of magnets as the Nexus 4, the wireless charger won’t get much action beyond a single device. And considering that the device is $60, that’s a pretty bad investment.

But boy, do I still want one.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Although Google postponed its big launch event in Manhattan today, some more details about its latest device, the Nexus 4, have leaked, thanks to LG’s international websites. Now, Google has confirmed the device’s launch as well as details on the charging technologies it supports.

From the official Google blog:

Nexus 4 is our latest smartphone, developed together with LG. It has a quad-core processor, which means it’s super fast, a crisp 4.7″ (320 ppi) display that’s perfect for looking at photos and watching YouTube, and with wireless charging — you just set the phone down on a charging surface to power it up, no wires needed.

The new specs, which include out-of-the-box wireless charging capabilities, were first reported by the intrepid nerds of Ubergizmo. The keyword for today’s news is “induction coil.”

Induction coils are a fun little technology invented by Irish priest and scientist Nicholas Callan in 1836. These coils, made of two insulated copper wires wrapped around an iron core, can transform a low-voltage DC power supply into high-voltage pulses through the magic of electromagnetic fields that are created and then collapse. The coils are currently used in ignition relays in car engines, in camera flashes, and in strobe lights.

The induction coil in the Nexus 4 would match with another induction coil in a wireless charging base. Inductive coupling technologies for charging devices have proven slower at charging, less efficient, and more costly to produce; they’re also completely without industry-wide standards, which is a whole barrel of monkeys’ worth of fun to sort out (remember the days before microUSB chargers took over?).

On the other hand, induction chargers are cool, because … science.

Of course, the phone also comes with a port for traditional charging for those unimpressed by science and/or in a hurry to get their battery juiced up again.

Here’s a snap of the leaked manual, which popped up on LG’s UK and Australian websites shortly after Google cancelled the product announcement due to Hurricane Sandy‘s impending rampage across the Atlantic seaboard.

We also expected to hear more about the Nexus 10 at today’s now-postponed event.

Our previous look at the Nexus 4 left VentureBeat reporter Ricardo Bilton somewhat unimpressed with the design; his exact words were “heavy on bling, short on style.” We’ll see how the phone’s functions and features measure up when Google lets us get our mitts on these devices soon. In the meantime, we’re getting more details from the device manufacturers and will have a full report on the devices shortly.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Between the announcement of the iPhone 5 and the day everyone started complaining about Apple’s new Maps app, the biggest complaint about the new device was the lack of wireless charging.

Wireless charging is a feature few people probably even knew they wanted, but Nokia managed to pique everyone’s interest by announcing the Lumia 920 the week prior to the iPhone event. The 920 has wireless charging, and this seemed novel enough that its absence in the iPhone 5 was something to latch onto.

The subject churned up enough commotion that Apple’s product guru, Phil Schiller, even defended the absence in his interview with Ina Fried.

Setting aside the Apple vs. The World marketing fight in the press, I think the attention this feature merited speaks to a widespread interest in the idea of wireless charging. There is something deeper here that evokes emotion in smartphone users. The idea of wireless charging holds immense appeal. Unfortunately, the reality of the technology doesn’t live up to our expectations.

Visit any tech conference (or probably any non-tech conference, too, for that matter), scan the walls, and you will always find someone charging their phone. The tell-tale white cables can be found in every public, and not so public, power outlet. If you are like me, you probably have at least one extra power cord in your backpack or bag. When I travel for business, I have three or four — iPad, phone, computer, plus an extra for ‘just in case’. When I travel for leisure it’s worse, as everyone in the family needs a power adapter.

So when people hear “wireless charging,” they assume they can do away with all that.

Sadly, that is not the case. Schiller put it well when he said that people do not need another device to plug in. And that’s just what wireless charging means today. You still need a power adapter. It still needs to be plugged into the wall, but at the other end is some device that you can place your phone on. The only savings is the millisecond it takes to actually plug your charger into the phone.

Wireless charging has been around for several years. The first phone that prominently featured it was the Palm Pre, which came out four years ago. It featured a charging station that magnetically docks with the phone. The fact that very few phones since then offered wireless charging speaks to two problems with the feature — one technological the other institutional.

The technology problem is that power is not magic, it is electricity. To channel the current from a charging station to a phone requires added components in the phone. The power point disappears from the exterior of the phone, but it still exists on the inside. And getting electricity from the charger into the phone is still something of an exact process — the hidden components have to line up. The charging station that came with the Palm Pre had magnets that aligned with magnets in the phone to make sure the power source and the power drain in the phone lined up precisely. I imagine the solution on the Nokia  Lumia 920 is similar. Other solutions, such as accessories from Powermat, require that the device lines up in a specific spot on the charging station, and on some Powermat products this requires a little bit of work.

This is the unspoken secret of wireless charging. You cannot just put a device on the charger. the phone has to sit in a specific spot. The technology is improving, and newer Powermat models have a bit more freedom of positioning. But there is a trade-off involved. Phones need metallic charging elements to receive wireless power. The more  of these you put in a phone, the less precise positioning needed. However, little pieces of metal are not free, they can make a meaningful difference in the price of a phone. They also take up space, which could otherwise go to useful things like a bigger battery. They can require design changes to the phone’s radio to make sure those pieces of metal do not interfere with the phone’s antennas and risk disrupting WiFi or the cellular radio.

This problem is mostly solvable. “Mostly” in the sense that wireless power designers can probably get the technology to work “well enough” with a smaller sacrifice for the phone’s other elements. This then leads to the bigger issue facing wireless charging.

When given the choice between wireless charging as it exists today and their jumble of power cords, most people will quickly realize that today’s solution offers little added benefit. People do not want another cable, they want to get rid of all their cables. That is the definition of freedom, and I think it is what most people deep down are hoping for when they hear the term wireless charging. For this technology to be useful, it has to be widely available. Available to the point that consumers can travel without power cables, just like few people carry around Ethernet cables anymore because they know they can find WiFi in most places.

That vision is where the institutional issues come into play. The industry is faced with something of a chicken and egg problem. Venues like hotels, airports, and stadiums are reluctant to add wireless charging stations today. These are not free, and even if they were available everywhere overnight, there would be no phones to use them. Phone makers, for their part, are reluctant to add the cost to their phones for a feature if consumers have no place to tap into it.

In the past, problems such as these, which required widespread common adoption, led to the creation of standards bodies. The idea is that if everyone can agree to a common technology, it removes a serious element of risk. Slowly, smartphone vendors could add it to their products and venues could slowly add charging stations. This is how WiFi came into being, a common standard pushed by some of the industry’s leading manufacturers (like Apple for example).

By my count, there are six competing standards for wireless charging, but two have really taken the lead — Powermat and Qi (backed by the Wireless Power Consortium or WPC). Powermat is a private company; Qi emerged from academia but now has commercial backers. Both groups have interesting technology that does not differ that much. However, the two camps have now come to define that chicken and egg.

Take a look at each group’s partners. The WPC counts a large number of component and handset makers among its members, while Powermat has found partners on the distribution side of the equation. Put simply, Qi has the devices and Powermat has many of the places you would want to charge those devices. Qi has partners whose products we use regularly. Powermat’s partners are tantalizing in that they offer places we would like charging to work — for instance its list includes Teknion, the world’s leading maker of airport furniture, and GM. (For the record, my travel pack includes a car cigarette light adapter for my iPad charger.)

There is no reason these groups cannot eventually find some way to work together. Our understanding is that phone makers are beginning to require their component vendors to support both standards. But commercial concerns will likely keep the camps separate for some time.

That said, two companies have yet to weigh in, and either of them could tip the balance. Apple is the obvious one; it seems in no hurry to weigh in on this fight. The other is Qualcomm, the leading supplier of basebands and silicon for smartphones today. I think Qualcomm has enough influence to decide the winner between Qi and WPC. Unfortunately, Qualcomm is promoting its own standard — WiPower. To further muddy the waters, the WiPower Alliance counts several semicondcutor vendors among its members, as well as Powermat.

Eventually, the industry will work itself out, although it is too early to see how all the chips will fall. Until then, and until we consumers can count on finding a wireless charging pad in every hotel room and airport lounge, the reality of wireless charging will still lag behind the ideal we would all like.

Jay Goldberg is a financial analyst with an investment bank. He has been working with tech companies for 10 years. Prior to that he lived and worked in China for almost 10 years. You can follow him on Twitter @jaygoldberg.

Volvo will start testing inductive charging, which transfers power over the air to charge electric devices without requiring any wires, on its next series of electric cars in Europe later this year.

A report from Pike Research suggested wireless charging for electric vehicles will be a $272 million business by 2015. That could include creating long strips of inductive charging plates on roads and highways that charge vehicles as they drive over them, or placing charging plates under parking spots that charge the cars while drivers are out shopping or eating lunch. The technology is familiar in consumer electronics, where companies like PowerMat are pushing tech-savvy individuals to “cut the cables.”

But the technology is still in its infancy and can only transfer small amounts of power over very short distances. An iPhone, for example, has to literally lie on top of a PowerMat to receive an electric charge. It’s an application of magnetic induction, which uses a changing magnetic flux to pushes electrons and create a current that transfers electricity from an energy source to a battery. There are a few companies working on improving that range, like WiTricity, but no company has shown it can cover large distances at scale yet.

Most electric car companies are relying on other companies to deploy a network of electric car charging stations that let drivers park their car and plug it into a charger. Companies like EcoTality and Coloumb have been rolling out networks of chargers across the country. In Houston, power plant company NRG Energy launched its first privately funded network of charging stations last month, which uses a set of flat-rate monthly charging packages.

That includes the city of San Francisco, Calif., which will deploy a network of electric car charging stations to promote electric car adoption. Those electric car charging stations will be free to use for a year — and will rely on traditional plug-in charging technology. But those plug-in electric car charging stations can take a long time to charge a drained electric car battery, usually two to five hours.

Volvo said inductive charging can charge an empty 24 kilowatt-hour electric car battery in about an hour and twenty minutes, which would be a significant advantage over traditional plug-in electric charging. Most electric car buyers are concerned about how far the car can drive and how long it takes to charge a car after the battery runs dry, according to a report by Accenture. Inductive charging plates still won’t match the three or four minutes it takes to fill a traditional car with gasoline, but it could make plug-in electric cars and electric hybrids more appealing to mainstream car buyers.

[Photo: Volvo]

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