When it comes to battery charging, smartphone manufacturers from China are playing a pioneering role. They have not only introduced groundbreaking speed standards for the classic wired charging of smartphones. They also offer state-of-the-art technology for wireless charging. And they never rest on their laurels. Year after year and smartphone generation after smartphone generation, the batteries are charged faster. Now there seems to be a next impressive progress in this area. For example, manufacturers Xiaomi and Motorola are clearly working on wireless charging over a distance.
“Mi Air Charge” and “Motorola One Hyper”
Xiaomi and Motorola have already given their futuristic charging technology a name. Unlike Motorola, Xiaomi even revealed how the so-called “Mi Air Charge” is supposed to work in a blog post. It is questionable what we can read into this. It is certain that Motorola has not yet made any statements about its remote charging called “Motorola One Hyper”. There are only short moving pictures here so far. Is this possibly a bluff? In the video published by Xiaomi, you can roughly understand how the new technology is supposed to work. The core is a wireless charger, which the manufacturer calls a “self-isolated charging station”.
We assume that this is connected to a power socket. Thanks to the built-in five phase interference antennas, the device can detect the corresponding smartphone within a radius of about 1 meter. If this is the case, the built-in phase control array comes into play. This has a total of 144 antennas and relies on the so-called beamforming technology. This ensures that the smallest waves are sent to the smartphone. The smartphone also has to have the antennas so that it can actually draw power. Then it can convert the waves into electricity.
Currently 5 watts of power possible
According to Xiaomi, the technology is currently said to be capable of charging the phone with 5 watts of power. In addition, Xiaomi reiterates that obstacles between the charger and the smartphone should not have a negative impact on charging efficiency. Of course, we know much more power especially from fast charging, but you have to keep in mind that we are just at the beginning of an entirely new technology here. Xiaomi’s plan to enable charging over distance for multiple devices at the same time is particularly exciting.
What is the status at Motorola?
As we mentioned at the beginning, there is no real solid info from Motorola yet. However, the company seems to be following a very similar path. Nevertheless, the smartphone manufacturer’s development status is obviously far behind Xiaomi’s. After all, the announcement of the technology was not made nearly as formally.
Motorola only announced the development via Weibo, the largest Chinese microblogging service. Here, the company posted a video of two smartphones charging while standing within a scant meter of the charger. Unlike Xiaomi, Motorola also seems to want to get health concerns out of the way in advance. Thus, it can also be seen that holding a human hand in between accommodates the charging process. Thus, the waves should not go through the body.
Welcome to the future
Just imagine the possibilities that this technology brings. Possibly in the future, one charger in the home could be all that is needed to charge all devices wirelessly and. If you take it even further, all power cables could disappear from the home. One would only have to integrate appropriate chargers as a wireless power source in the walls. All electrical devices could then draw their power wirelessly. However, it is quite questionable what influence the waves can have on human health. Accordingly, it will probably be a long time before the futuristic technology from Xiaomi and Motorola reaches the mainstream.
