4 ms·

First tech needs to focus on small distance wireless power. I need to be able to easily and reliably charge my phone wirelessly. Plugging in wires is just strai

First tech needs to focus on small distance wireless power. I need to be able to easily and reliably charge my phone wirelessly. Plugging in wires is just straight up old fashioned. Qi is really getting mainstream now but having to position the phone perfectly is not that great. I know of A4WP with NXP as one of the main companies developing tech that can charge everything over the pad, no matter the placement. It also includes stacking. If we can build out this to also be integrated in laptops, lamps and other "put down" devices, I can believe this can evolve into something larger doing it over a bigger distance.

jacquesm 11y ago
The one thing I can think of is to massively reduce the power consumption of phones. That would go a long way towards making various wireless charging methods (including solar, by the way) much more feasible. Todays phones are very power hungry.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  That's because (smart)phones are portable general-purpose computers. I see two ways of reducing power use. 1) Go back to small, low-power screens and physical keypads for data input. 2) Heavily optimize the stack. You could put less power-hungry parts in a smartphone, but then it wouldn't boot up. Even top phones have trouble keeping up with software bloat, being somewhat-usable when you buy them, and barely-usable after a year or two. And let's not talk about the cheap phones, which have barely enough power to run the OS.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    I don't agree phones are 'general-purpose computers'. They're just end-points of very large eco-systems locked down in as many ways as possible. Here is one thread about that: https://lwn.net/Articles/662147/ https://lwn.net/Articles/662147/
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      I know. I tend to whine about it on HN every now and then :). But this time I meant it from an engineering point of view. Smartphones don't run on ASICs but on general-purpose microcontrollers, they have a general-purpose OS capable of running arbitrary code. And they run staggering amounts of it.

jacquesm 11y ago

The one thing I can think of is to massively reduce the power consumption of phones. That would go a long way towards making various wireless charging methods (including solar, by the way) much more feasible. Todays phones are very power hungry.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
That's because (smart)phones are portable general-purpose computers. I see two ways of reducing power use. 1) Go back to small, low-power screens and physical keypads for data input. 2) Heavily optimize the stack. You could put less power-hungry parts in a smartphone, but then it wouldn't boot up. Even top phones have trouble keeping up with software bloat, being somewhat-usable when you buy them, and barely-usable after a year or two. And let's not talk about the cheap phones, which have barely enough power to run the OS.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  I don't agree phones are 'general-purpose computers'. They're just end-points of very large eco-systems locked down in as many ways as possible. Here is one thread about that: https://lwn.net/Articles/662147/ https://lwn.net/Articles/662147/
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    I know. I tend to whine about it on HN every now and then :). But this time I meant it from an engineering point of view. Smartphones don't run on ASICs but on general-purpose microcontrollers, they have a general-purpose OS capable of running arbitrary code. And they run staggering amounts of it.