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Comment by ihuman | Hacker News Reader

I thought Apple already did wireless charging with the Apple Watch. Why is this news?

"Energous’ technology involves more than just a charging mat to lay devices on top of. The company’s transmitter broadcasts proprietary waveforms directly to receivers and then surrounds those receivers with a radio frequency “pocket” that charges devices. The signals can travel up to 15 feet, and up to 12 devices can be charged at once."

This quote sums up the difference

>The signals can travel up to 15 feet, and up to 12 devices can be charged at once.

Wow, so if this technology became ubiquitous and transmitters were installed en masse in public places... we might in the future simply not even THINK about our device battery levels.

It'd be awesome. Shame it won't be this technology, which is going to be proprietary to Apple devices, though.

Yay a proprietary changing protocol so I will need how many different wireless charging stations?

Sigh.

People complain that they don't innovate and also complain that they don't use standards, you can't innovate while using standards I think

Of course you can. Look at the web.

Indeed. Microsoft broke with standards, and introduced the non-standard IXMLHTTPRequest API for their browsers. It later became a standard, but it certainly wasn't when it first happened.

Major innovation doesn't come from standards bodies, it comes from operational implementation and later opening up the implementations for standardisation. Unfortunately, Apple has not demonstrated a lot of interest in the latter part in technologies where it would be really really nice for end users (FaceTime, iMessage), but has in other areas that may benefit developers (Swift).

Who knows what'll happen in future.

No you can't. Look at the web.

From the article:

... Bloomberg reported that Apple was exploring the possibility of including a novel form of wireless charging in upcoming iPhones, one that works at a distance and doesn’t require contact between device and power source. An analyst at Disruptive Tech Research (DTR) followed up by providing clues that Apple was working with Nasdaq-listed Energous to employ its WattUp technology for that very purpose.

I can't believe I missed that. Thanks for pointing it out.

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