Some years ago I had a colleague who had been an early electrical engineer at a company called SplashPower [0], one of the smartest people I've ever worked with

Some years ago I had a colleague who had been an early electrical engineer at a company called SplashPower [0], one of the smartest people I've ever worked with. It had spent much of the early 2000s trying to develop exactly what Apple tried to do with an induction charging pad where you could place items anywhere. Ultimately they didn't manage to achieve it and went bankrupt. In conversation he said that he didn't think it was possible to do, too much power was needed to inductively charge misaligned coils. At the time Apple was rumoured to be trying to do it, he predicted that they would fail. Ultimately the SplashPower tech was brought by the company that went on to develop the Qi charging standard [1]. The Qi tech doesn't achieve the original vision though. I struggle to believe that this FreePower tech works as advertised. I suspect from a quick browse they are brute forcing it by having 10s of coils, turning on just the one that most closely aligned with the devices coil. 0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splashpower https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splashpower 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Power_Consortium https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Power_Consortium Edit: SplashPowers main patent expired three days ago! https://patents.google.com/patent/US6906495B2/en?oq=6906495 https://patents.google.com/patent/US6906495B2/en?oq=6906495