Qi Wireless Charging Standard Updated, Sports Longer Range Now

The concept of wireless charging is great because it means that you won’t have to fiddle about with wires when you need to charge your phone. However it isn’t truly wireless because your device still needs to be placed on the charging mat. Well the good news is that the Wireless Power Consortium has recently updated the charging specification to Qi v1.2.

What’s the difference, you ask? Well the difference is that with the new Qi standard, they have made it so that the wireless power can be transmitted from up to 45mm. This is versus the 7mm found on Qi v1.1. What does this mean for the average user? Well it means that we could soon see wireless chargers being embedded into surfaces where they could not before due to the limited range.

For example we could soon start to see more tables being embedded with Qi wireless chargers, or maybe even cars, so we could just place our phones in our cars in a dedicated slot and it will begin charging. We won’t have to go fiddle around for cables or buy a specific charger just for use in the car.

The Wireless Power Consortium has also revealed that the Qi v1.2 standard will also be able to blast 2,000 watts of resonant energy through the air, thus allowing it to power kitchen appliances. The Qi v1.2 standard will also allow for a single inverter to power multiple coils which could result in cheaper multi-device chargers. No word on when we will be seeing Qi v1.2 chargers hit the street, but hopefully it will be soon.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: wireless charging