Wireless charging has always seemed like a bit of a damp squib. Your phone has to be within 4 cm of the wireless charging pad, which practically speaking means your phone has to be touching the wireless charging pad. Honestly, what is the point of that? Well Pi changes all of that and looks likely to soon give wireless charging a renewed purpose.
Pi looks a bit like a conical Amazon Alexa. It is minimalist and understated enough to not really seem out of place anywhere, whether that be in the office or the kitchen. It is what is under the hood, however, that is getting everybody excited because a team from MIT have actually figured out a way to change the angle of a magnetic field so that it lines up perfectly with your device. Pi can charge 4 or more devices at once from up to a foot away!
At the moment, the technology requires that you use a s special resonant receiver case but once you have the case you’ll be able to wirelessly charge your phone in your hand whilst you’re using it.
Although it isn’t available yet the startup behind Pi have said that it’ll cost a lot less than $200 when it finally hits the shelves. If you would like to reserve yourself a Pi charger you can do so by signing up with your email on the company website.
It is good to see that finally wireless charging might actually become useful. If Pi can really crack this technology then hopefully hardware developers will start building the resonant receiver technology directly into their devices. Once we have that we’ll be well on our way to devices that are constantly receiving charge from Wi-Fi like transmitters.
Until then though, we’ll just have to follow the tips laid out in this video:
