Anyone see the Powermat wireless charger commercial?

[ultimatebob]

I heard that the original Powermat charger backs screwed with the compass on the iPhone 3GS. I wonder if that's still a problem with this thing.

 

[bobdole369]

You know what has close to 100% efficiency? The wire between your wall wart and the device!

Unfortunately this isn't always true. When you factor in parasitic losses and the power wasted for when the adaptor is not charging, often the wall wart is very inefficient.

http://blog.lastinfirstout.net/2008/09/unplug-your-wall-warts-and-save-planet.html

http://www.easyecoblog.com/123/power-bricks-aka-wall-warts/

Not all wall plugs do this. Its the ones that are very cheap, very chinese, and usually pretty heavy. As its simply a transformer, there are indeed some power used with nothing plugged in. Often even switching supplies have some loss, but orders of magnitude less than a simple transformer/rectifier wall wart.

I for one support induction charging as a tech. It's the wave of the future. However as its simply a coil of wire and at high frequency (thus it is a transmitter), as an amateur radio operator, must oppose it - much like I oppose Broadband over Power Lines, and ethernet over home electrical wiring.

 

[Numenorean]

Problem is that they don't have stuff for many phones. They have stuff for iPhones, but those are crap, and their "universal" power cube things look like it just has to plug in anyway, so basically no point to that at all.

Until they can have a true wireless solution for a large number of devices, it's worthless.

 

[Wyndru]

My Braun toothbrush has been charging by induction for 5 or 6 years now...

This

 

[Rubycon]

This

Waterpik had an induction charged electric toothbrush in the 80s. The base had a pole that went into a cavity at the bottom of the tooth brush.

 

[Eli]

Why shouldn't they be allowed to air that?

Hell, take the bleeps out for all I care.

 

[Eli]

I heard that the original Powermat charger backs screwed with the compass on the iPhone 3GS. I wonder if that's still a problem with this thing.

Pretty much anything electronic is going to screw with a compass.....

 

[ultimatebob]

Pretty much anything electronic is going to screw with a compass.....

Yeah, but the Powermat charger backs have friggin magnets in them! Good luck using a compass with one of those!