The Evolution of Wireless Charging: A Guide to Understanding the Industry

The world of wireless charging is rapidly evolving, with several companies vying for dominance in this emerging market. At the forefront of this technology are Apple and Samsung, both of which have been working on wireless charging solutions for their latest smartphones. However, there's a sense of frustration among consumers due to the lack of standardization in this field.

One of the major players in the wireless charging industry is the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC), which includes members such as Qualcomm, Samsung, LG, HTC, and Mediatek. This consortium aims to establish a common standard for wireless charging, ensuring that devices from different manufacturers can seamlessly communicate with each other. On the other hand, there's also the Fuel Cell Alliance, a merger between the Alliance for Wireless Power (AWP) and the Power Matters Alliance (PMA). PMA is already present in some of the leading flagship Samsung phones, while the WPC aims to provide a more comprehensive solution.

However, one of the most promising technologies in this field is the "whatup" technology, which hasn't yet been implemented in any products. Despite not having any products on the market, the company claims that it will release its first product by the end of 2017. Apple has also been rumored to be working with whatup, further fueling speculation about its involvement in this emerging field.

While wireless charging technology is still evolving, there's one area where it could make a significant impact: the ability for devices to communicate while charging. Currently, devices only exchange basic information about power levels and battery levels. However, if technologies were advanced enough, it would be great if devices could have more in-depth communication, such as software updates or diagnostics.

One of the biggest challenges facing wireless charging is standardization. With multiple companies developing their own proprietary solutions, consumers are left with a confusing landscape of competing standards. This lack of standardization makes it difficult for consumers to invest in one ecosystem and stick with it, fearing that another company's technology might become the new standard.

The consequences of this lack of standardization have been seen in other areas of consumer technology, such as VHS vs Betamax, HD DVD vs Blu-ray, and the ongoing struggle between various wireless communication protocols. Consumers are often left to navigate a confusing world of competing standards, investing in multiple products that might not be compatible with each other.

The Future of Wireless Charging: A Potential Game-Changer

One area where wireless charging could have a significant impact is in the automotive industry. Imagine an electric car driving into your garage and automatically starting to charge its battery while also receiving software updates or diagnostic information. This concept may seem like science fiction, but it's possible that future technologies could enable such capabilities.

In this scenario, the charger and the device would communicate with each other, exchanging information about power levels and other data. This technology has the potential to revolutionize the way we think about charging our devices, making it seamless and convenient.

However, at present, this is still a pipe dream, and most solutions rely on NFC (near-field communication) or Bluetooth-enabled wireless charging. While these technologies are already available, they often require physical contact between the device and the charger.

Conclusion

Wireless charging technology has come a long way in recent years, with several companies vying for dominance in this emerging market. However, despite its promise, there's still much work to be done before it becomes a seamless and convenient experience for consumers. The lack of standardization is a major hurdle, but if technologies can advance to enable more in-depth communication between devices, wireless charging could become a game-changer.

As we move forward, it's essential that companies like the Wireless Power Consortium, Fuel Cell Alliance, and whatup work together to establish common standards for wireless charging. This would ensure that consumers have access to seamless and convenient charging solutions across different brands and models. With continued innovation and collaboration, wireless charging could become an indispensable feature in our smartphones, making it easier and more enjoyable to stay connected on the go.

My name is G Sims from Android Authority, and I hope you enjoyed this video. Don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit that little bell icon so you get notifications when we release a new video. Also, go over to androidauthority.com for all the latest news and updates on wireless charging technology.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwireless charging is one of those technologies that I really want to see succeed but really smartphone users haven't become fully enamored with it yet and maybe one of the reasons is that there are different competing standards so what are those competing standards and what is the future of wireless charging well let me explain first of all I really must recommend that you go to watch one of my videos about wireless charging there I give a demonstration using a mail and some wires and a battery and a voltmeter about the basic principles of how wireless charging work that will be linked here in the description below but please do go and watch that because that will give you a background to what I'm going to tell you now now wireless charging is one of those features you find in some of the topend flagship smartphones but the manufacturers the OEM don't really make a huge fuss about it it is in the uh top end uh Galaxy uh smartphones that some version of the LG G6 have wireless charging in it but really there's not a big fuss made about it now one of the reasons for that is that there are three different competing organizations that are trying to push forward their W wireless charging technology now in the background one of the biggest things that's probably happened is this year Apple joined the wireless power Consortium with their Chi charges now the chi charges is what you find in the uh Galaxy phones from Samsung for example now the fact that Apple joined this this organization means there's now lots of rumors that the iPhone 8 will support it and lots of Apple Fans are say well once the iPhone supports it everybody will support it now that might not actually be the case the future will show but let me tell you about the different types of charging technology that exist today and it's all about distance how far do you have to be away from the charging station now the one that is the most popular today isqi and Chi has two different types of system one is the one where you touch the phone directly on the back of the pad it has to be within a qu of an inch within 7 mm otherwise the Char doesn't work and that's called induction charging and that's what we see today on phones like the Galaxy uh S7 now the chi standard also includes something called resonant charging which allows the distance to be slightly larger 45 mm which about 1.7 in and that's good when you want to have the Chargers built into a desk for the office or maybe some furniture so you put your phone down on the r arm of your chair and it starts charging even though it's not exposed at the surface now the third type of Wireless charging is what I'm calling uncoupled and that's a system where the device that's being charged and the charging station don't need to be next to each other in fact there's a new type of technology which the devices can be up to 15 ft away now the leader in this field at the moment is a technology called what up not what up but what up and the idea is that when you walk into a room that has one of these charging base stations your devices can start to be charged remotely and it does that by sending out radio signals in the five gigahertz band that then uh cause the charging to happen in the devices and in fact these base stations can be programmed so that when it sees maybe your smartphone it gives that priority in charging than it does maybe over your Fitbit and the reason for that is there isn't that much power that can be transmitted through this new system we're talking maybe only 700 milliamp hours so that's not very high now Apple are also rumored to be working with the what up technology and that again has given a whole bunch of rumors about about wireless charging in future versions of the iPhone now just to quickly mention the three different uh camps that are available at the moment one is the wireless power Consortium with the uh chi charging and that's got Qualcomm in it and Samsung LG HTC mediate Tech and now of course Apple the other is the fuel cell Alliance and that was made by a merger between the alliance for wireless power and the power matters Alliance PMA now PMA charging is what you actually find inside also of some of the leading Flagship Samsung phones so Samsung kind of went with both ways and of course Samsung are one of the partners of the air fuel Alliance as our LG Sony HT Qualcomm Intel mediatech and now also huwei so as you can see some companies are hedging their bets and put and being part of both different specifications and the third one is this one called whatup which I just talked about at the moment they don't have any products actually out they say they'll have a product out at the end of 2017 and apple are room rumored to be working with them now while technology is great while Innovation is brilliant one thing we all hate is competing standards which means that you invest in one ecosystem you invest in one way of doing things and then find out that the other one did became the boss and we really hate that so for Consumer sakes I really just do shout out to all of these different power charging organizations get your act together and work together because I don't want to buy a phone and then find out that actually I chose the wrong one and there are so many examples of this in consumer history VHS and betamax HD DVD and Blu-ray and there's just so many other examples really we want one option that works well and we're prepared to pay for it if it does the job properly now there's one area that I haven't mentioned that could really be a deciding factor when it comes to wireless charging and that is that when there's this charging happening the phone and the base station could also communicate now at the moment there is some basic communication that happens at the 2 kilobits per second uh range which is very very small when a phone is placed on a charging pad because they discuss between the charger and the phone what level of power wants to be uh use what the battery level is and so they can talk to each other but wouldn't it be great if you could put your phone down on to uh a charging pad on a desk and let's say you put it down on a table inside a coffee shop and actually UPC comes the menu and you can order from there and that automatically gets sent over to the uh bar where they're making the coffees for you what about if in the future you have a electro electric car it drives into your garage it starts to use wireless charging to charge it up and at the same time it starts to talk to the uh wireless charger maybe receiving software updates maybe it's um kind of downloading its fuel statistics and it's kind of Diagnostics all these things would be great now at the moment that doesn't exist in a kind of a generalized form there is that idea to have that kind of discussion about power levels but wouldn't it be good if Technologies were change so that actually you could have communications while you were charging now really the best Solutions at the moment are kind of using NFC together with Chi charging or maybe to have kind of some bluetooth enabled but if you've got all of that that stuff going on between the two devices wouldn't it be great if it was just built in so you had wireless charging and nearfield Communications of A Sort at the same time maybe that will be the thing that will make wireless charging take off and be the uh kind of technology that we all want in our smartphones well my name is G Sims from Android authority I hope you enjoyed this video if you did please do give it a thumbs up please use the comments below to tell me do you use wireless charging I know some of you really love it some of you just don't care some of you it's a real must when you buy a phone some of you if it's got it I don't mind tell me what you think about wireless charging tell me what you think would be the best thing about wireless charging that would make you change your mind so that you would start to use it also don't forget to subscribe to Android Authority's YouTube channel hit that little bell icon so that you get notifications when we release a new video and last but not least go over to Android authority.com because we are your source for all things Androidwireless charging is one of those technologies that I really want to see succeed but really smartphone users haven't become fully enamored with it yet and maybe one of the reasons is that there are different competing standards so what are those competing standards and what is the future of wireless charging well let me explain first of all I really must recommend that you go to watch one of my videos about wireless charging there I give a demonstration using a mail and some wires and a battery and a voltmeter about the basic principles of how wireless charging work that will be linked here in the description below but please do go and watch that because that will give you a background to what I'm going to tell you now now wireless charging is one of those features you find in some of the topend flagship smartphones but the manufacturers the OEM don't really make a huge fuss about it it is in the uh top end uh Galaxy uh smartphones that some version of the LG G6 have wireless charging in it but really there's not a big fuss made about it now one of the reasons for that is that there are three different competing organizations that are trying to push forward their W wireless charging technology now in the background one of the biggest things that's probably happened is this year Apple joined the wireless power Consortium with their Chi charges now the chi charges is what you find in the uh Galaxy phones from Samsung for example now the fact that Apple joined this this organization means there's now lots of rumors that the iPhone 8 will support it and lots of Apple Fans are say well once the iPhone supports it everybody will support it now that might not actually be the case the future will show but let me tell you about the different types of charging technology that exist today and it's all about distance how far do you have to be away from the charging station now the one that is the most popular today isqi and Chi has two different types of system one is the one where you touch the phone directly on the back of the pad it has to be within a qu of an inch within 7 mm otherwise the Char doesn't work and that's called induction charging and that's what we see today on phones like the Galaxy uh S7 now the chi standard also includes something called resonant charging which allows the distance to be slightly larger 45 mm which about 1.7 in and that's good when you want to have the Chargers built into a desk for the office or maybe some furniture so you put your phone down on the r arm of your chair and it starts charging even though it's not exposed at the surface now the third type of Wireless charging is what I'm calling uncoupled and that's a system where the device that's being charged and the charging station don't need to be next to each other in fact there's a new type of technology which the devices can be up to 15 ft away now the leader in this field at the moment is a technology called what up not what up but what up and the idea is that when you walk into a room that has one of these charging base stations your devices can start to be charged remotely and it does that by sending out radio signals in the five gigahertz band that then uh cause the charging to happen in the devices and in fact these base stations can be programmed so that when it sees maybe your smartphone it gives that priority in charging than it does maybe over your Fitbit and the reason for that is there isn't that much power that can be transmitted through this new system we're talking maybe only 700 milliamp hours so that's not very high now Apple are also rumored to be working with the what up technology and that again has given a whole bunch of rumors about about wireless charging in future versions of the iPhone now just to quickly mention the three different uh camps that are available at the moment one is the wireless power Consortium with the uh chi charging and that's got Qualcomm in it and Samsung LG HTC mediate Tech and now of course Apple the other is the fuel cell Alliance and that was made by a merger between the alliance for wireless power and the power matters Alliance PMA now PMA charging is what you actually find inside also of some of the leading Flagship Samsung phones so Samsung kind of went with both ways and of course Samsung are one of the partners of the air fuel Alliance as our LG Sony HT Qualcomm Intel mediatech and now also huwei so as you can see some companies are hedging their bets and put and being part of both different specifications and the third one is this one called whatup which I just talked about at the moment they don't have any products actually out they say they'll have a product out at the end of 2017 and apple are room rumored to be working with them now while technology is great while Innovation is brilliant one thing we all hate is competing standards which means that you invest in one ecosystem you invest in one way of doing things and then find out that the other one did became the boss and we really hate that so for Consumer sakes I really just do shout out to all of these different power charging organizations get your act together and work together because I don't want to buy a phone and then find out that actually I chose the wrong one and there are so many examples of this in consumer history VHS and betamax HD DVD and Blu-ray and there's just so many other examples really we want one option that works well and we're prepared to pay for it if it does the job properly now there's one area that I haven't mentioned that could really be a deciding factor when it comes to wireless charging and that is that when there's this charging happening the phone and the base station could also communicate now at the moment there is some basic communication that happens at the 2 kilobits per second uh range which is very very small when a phone is placed on a charging pad because they discuss between the charger and the phone what level of power wants to be uh use what the battery level is and so they can talk to each other but wouldn't it be great if you could put your phone down on to uh a charging pad on a desk and let's say you put it down on a table inside a coffee shop and actually UPC comes the menu and you can order from there and that automatically gets sent over to the uh bar where they're making the coffees for you what about if in the future you have a electro electric car it drives into your garage it starts to use wireless charging to charge it up and at the same time it starts to talk to the uh wireless charger maybe receiving software updates maybe it's um kind of downloading its fuel statistics and it's kind of Diagnostics all these things would be great now at the moment that doesn't exist in a kind of a generalized form there is that idea to have that kind of discussion about power levels but wouldn't it be good if Technologies were change so that actually you could have communications while you were charging now really the best Solutions at the moment are kind of using NFC together with Chi charging or maybe to have kind of some bluetooth enabled but if you've got all of that that stuff going on between the two devices wouldn't it be great if it was just built in so you had wireless charging and nearfield Communications of A Sort at the same time maybe that will be the thing that will make wireless charging take off and be the uh kind of technology that we all want in our smartphones well my name is G Sims from Android authority I hope you enjoyed this video if you did please do give it a thumbs up please use the comments below to tell me do you use wireless charging I know some of you really love it some of you just don't care some of you it's a real must when you buy a phone some of you if it's got it I don't mind tell me what you think about wireless charging tell me what you think would be the best thing about wireless charging that would make you change your mind so that you would start to use it also don't forget to subscribe to Android Authority's YouTube channel hit that little bell icon so that you get notifications when we release a new video and last but not least go over to Android authority.com because we are your source for all things Android\n"