Qi wireless power will get BlackBerry/iPhone add-ons and more power

6th September, 2010 by adina
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The Wireless Power Consortium’s Qi format seems to be ready to be built into hardware. Following earlier approval, Energizer is currently developing a wire-free charging sleeve for Apple’s iPhone 3G and 3GS, but also for the older BlackBerry Curve 8900. Polished variants of either are expected in the fall.

Sanyo, National Semiconductor and ST-Ericsson are also working on Qi-based devices, even if the last two will most probably produce hardware for others rather than sell it themselves. Prototypes are expected to show at a Consortium meeting on September 15, in Belgium.

Also as part of the news, WPC declared that it was developing a higher-powered variant of Qi. The actual implementation is able to handle only 5W, being limited mostly to MP3 players, phones and other low-energy devices; therefore, a new spec may support netbooks, tablets and maybe even full-size notebooks and power tools, such as drills.

There are other companies involved in the group, including Olympus, Philips, Samsung and Texas Instruments; however, these are not the only companies permitted to manufacture Qi hardware.


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