The Powermat wireless charger will only work with low-power portable gear like phones and iPods right now, but the boffins behind it are beavering away on something much more ambitious: a wireless charger for your laptop. Who needs a MagSafe connector when your desk can charge your machine for you?
The Powermat wireless charging mat that’s about to go on sale is designed to fill up iPhones, iPods, BlackBerrys and Nintendo DSs, but the company is ramping things up for Powermat follow-ups next year. Powermat marketing director Jamie Faulkner told us that the next step will be to “bring in higher power ranges next year”, with netbooks first on the list, and full sized laptops to follow.
That’s a smart move on Powermat’s part: currently you have to fit special cases on to the back of gadgets for it to work, which can make them an unwelcome size, but with a netbook, pocketability wouldn’t be an issue. Powermat did demo a laptop connected to a Powercube-like device back at CES, but the laptop had to be plugged in, which defeated the point of it.
Faulkner couldn’t give any more details, but a laptop Powermat charger would have to be a lot wider than the current versions to avoid wobble – we love the idea of having it on our desk so we don’t have to plug power bricks in and out all the time.
Faulkner also teased the possibility of Powermat-enabled kitchen worktops, where everything from a kettle to a blender would boil and whirl happily away with no danger of water getting near electrical cables.
Makes you think twice about grabbing a Dell Latitude Z wireless charging laptop, doesn’t it? Expect to see a lot more from Powermat at CES in January.
Out TBC | £TBC | Powermat
