The fallacy of wireless power

They’re back — wireless chargers, that is. If you believe the hype in the product blogs and from some consulting firms, by 2016 you’ll have them nearly everywhere: hotel rooms, conference rooms, airports, lobbies, cafés, and on your desks and entryway tables.

I’m not so sure.

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Despite years of vendor attempts, the fairly old technology underneath wireless charging — inductive charging — has simply failed to take root in computing devices.

Wireless charging isn’t wireless Perhaps the most obvious strike against wireless charging is that it is not in fact wireless. You run a wire from your power source (wall outlet or USB port) to the charger. Then you need to have physical contact between that charger and the flagging device. It’s the contact method that changes in inductive charging, a switch from a plugged-in cable to overlapping charging surfaces.

And you don’t want true wireless charging anyhow, even though demonstration versions exist. Why? Because most of the energy gets lost heating the air as the power travels between its emitter and the device. Also, you’re sending a strong electromagnetic beam or waves through the space that you and other people (and the occasional pet) exist. We have all sorts of radio waves and electromagnetic radiation in our environments, but they’re low-level or have very limited range at troublesome intensities. That changes, and not in a good way, at the intensities needed to charge devices in a room or even on a specific table. It’d be like living in an always-on microwave oven.

Is the convenience enough to matter? What these devices promise is convenience: Each time you charge a smartphone or tablet, you save a few seconds by not having to link the MicroUSB, Dock, or Lightning connector to your phone or tablet or to place it precisely in its dock. Instead, you just place the device front side up on a mat. As long as the two inductive surfaces touch, the charging commences. With a big enough mat, you can charge multiple devices at the same time, using just one wall outlet or USB power source; gone are splitters and multiple cable types. “The convenience may look trivial, but if you start using it, you find it isn’t,” says Menno Treffer, chairman of the Wireless Power Consortium, an industry standards group whose Qi (pronounced “chee”) measure is used by several smartphone makers.

Convenience is a powerful motivator, and as additional manufacturers build wireless charging into their devices’ skins, more and more users could take advantage of that expedience. Lack of convenience has been a big barrier to adoption, even though wireless charging has been around for a decade; different devices have used proprietary technology, requiring a separate mat for each device. Alternatively, you have to plug them into a sled or other add-on, thus increasing bulk and effort over hooking up the charging cable. The development of inductive charging standards such as Qi removes both barriers, Treffer says.

But the no-plug convenience of inductive charging is not as simple as you might think. You have to ensure the contact surfaces touch over sufficient area and in the correct areas — placement still matters. That’s because only part of the device will have a charging surface; the entire case won’t be inductive due to issues around circuitry design, increased power wastage, and radiofrequency interference.

Charging pads are also large, and you need to uncover them when in use so that the device can make contact. On a cluttered desk, that extra space matters. A spare cable or typical wired charging dock takes much less space, and it serves as a syncing and transmission conduit for video and audio. (Yes, I know Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are increasingly taking over those other roles, but their use typically eats up battery life.)

Space matters on tables and office furniture as well — just where will they be placed in your conference room, near your airline seat, or in a Starbucks café? At least that challenge is not much greater than where to put charging docks or cables in such environments. Such shared-facility deployments might be plausible for induction charging mats, especially if the device manufacturers converge on a single standard.

Finally, charging pads are too bulky to carry during travel, such as in a backpack or a briefcase, much less in a pocket or a purse. You’ll still need traditional USB chargers, concedes the Wireless Power Consortium’s Treffer. But the inductive-charging industry and proponents such as Accenture’s Tom Stuermer, a consultant in its high-tech and communications practice, say that after a half-decade or so, inductive charging pads will be so ubiquitous that even business travelers won’t need to carry wired USB chargers. “People can rely on a short trip to Starbucks to top off the caffeine and battery,” Stuermer predicts.

Maybe, but ubiquitous infrastructure takes a very long time to develop, and someone needs to be able to pay for it. A decade after the iPod, most hotels still don’t provide compatible radios and alarm clocks. It took nearly as long for Wi-Fi to become reasonably available in high-traffic locations such as airports and fast-food restaurants, but even today the provider landscape is an incompatible mishmash. USB power ports in airport lobbies are still rare, five years after the iPhone, suggesting that ubiquitous infrastructure itself is years off.

This chicken-and-egg problem bedevils any technology that requires an infrastructure in place for the value to be realized. Inductive charging is in no worse shape than the others, so adoption will be mainly local for years to come, meaning in people’s homes and at their desks, likely at their own expense. That in turn means a larger immediate advantage is needed — and I don’t see saving a few seconds of plugging in a cable qualifies as an advantage.

The standards are coming, along with the industry battles Today, the Wireless Power Consortium’s Qi standard is supported by some big device manufacturers, notably Google’s Motorola Mobility unit, Huawei, HTC, LG, and Nokia, as well as big carriers, such as France Telecom, Japan’s Softbank (soon to own Sprint in the United States), and Verizon Wireless. A bunch of consumer electronics companies, such as Belkin, NEC, Onkyo, Panasonic, Philips Electronics, Ricoh, Samsung, Sony, Stanley Black & Decker (the power tools maker), Toshiba, and Visteon (a maker of car electronics), are onboard too, so those two barriers are going away. At least they could — there’s a second group called the Power Matters Alliance supported by AT&T, General Motors (think in-car charging), Google, and Starbucks.

Although there’s a risk of adoption-slowing market fragmentation and thus product incompatibility, I suspect it’s too late for PMA, given that Qi is already deployed in shipping products such as the Nokia 920, the LG-made Google Nexus 4, and the Verizon versions of the Nokia 820 and HTC Windows Phone 8X, whereas the PMA technology is still in formation.

But given that Google is selling products using one standard (Qi) but joining the chief rival’s organization (PMA), it’s quite possible we’ll see one of those interminable technology-industry wars. Some vendors will compete over who owns the technology — it’s no accident Energizer supports the Qi standard, while competitor Powermat developed the PMA one — and others like Google will play all sides as customers sit on their hands.

It’s at least annoying that Nokia and HTC sell models of their Lumia 800 series and 8X smartphones with Qi (for Verizon) and models of the same smartphones without (for AT&T and T-Mobile). Out of the gate, their products are fractured, so a company wanting to support Qi in its own facilities or for its own customers ends up favoring the customers of specific carriers — a bad move.

There’s also the Apple factor. The maker of the No. 2 smartphone (the iPhone), the top tablet (the iPad), and the top entertainment device (the iPod family) is supporting none of today’s proposed inductive-charging standards, and it’s mum on its plans. That may reduce the pace of demand, but it won’t kill inductive charging any more than Apple’s ignoring the near-field communications (NFC) technology has slowed NFC adoption in the rest of the market. Should Apple go a third way, it’ll be much harder for businesses to put out incompatible power mats — too many customers with contact-charging-compatible devices would be excluded.

Inductive charging wastes 30 percent of its power Next, there’s the power issue. Although induction chargers have become more energy-efficient, they still waste 30 percent of their power during transmission between the charging pad and the device’s chargeable skin, as compared to wired USB chargers.

The Wireless Power Consortium’s Treffer says that waste amounts to less than a penny per charge, but the environmental cost adds up: The average smartphone uses 5W to recharge, and there are more than 1 billion of them in use. Take the typical two-day charging cycle, and that’s 900 billion watts of energy used. If those were induction chargers, the energy use would rise to 1.125 trillion watts, wasting 225 billion watts a year. Based on data from the California Energy Commission, that wasted energy would power 35,000 homes and produce 100,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide pollution each year. There’d be a similar proportion of wasted energy for tablets, cordless drills, and other devices for which induction charging is being proposed.

In the grand scheme of things, that wastage is small. Today’s power chargers waste 60 to 100 times as much power as using induction charging would. That’s because most of today’s chargers use power even when not charging (“vampire power”), burning off energy for no reason all day, every day. The Qi standard doesn’t require chargers to shut off when not in use, but it doesn’t preclude manufacturers from doing the right thing by implementing auto-shut-off technology.

The wasted power in induction chargers is real, but tiny compared to all the other energy wastage for battery-charged devices. Still, in an era where greenhouse gas emissions and environment degradation are causing destructive climate change, it’s offensive to promote products that waste energy. I urge the Wireless Power Consortium to make auto-shut-off a required part of the standard, and for the European Union to require all chargers to have that feature.

Why the E.U.? The U.S. government is too averse to regulation to require it. California is looking to impose wireless charger efficiency requirements that could help because manufacturers typically use its standard across the United States rather than make two versions, but the E.U. is a more powerful force for change: When the E.U. mandated the end of proprietary phone chargers a few years ago to reduce unnecessary electronic waste, the result was a quick change to standard USB chargers worldwide, reducing waste globally and simplifying usage for consumers at the same time.

Inductive charging’s minor benefits may yet prevail Although I don’t believe the imperative for inductive charging is that strong, the barriers to its usage are also not strong. At $75, an inductive power mat is affordable to most business professionals and could get cheaper over time. The barrier to entry is fairly small — especially if your smartphone or tablet happens to support the technology out of the box. At worse, you stop using the mat because it’s always buried in papers; at best, you develop the habit for unconsciously placing your phone in the right position and leave your charging cables in your travel kit.

If inductive charging does become common, I suspect it will be a slow burn — at an uptake rate commensurate with its marginal benefit.

This article, “The fallacy of wireless power,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Galen Gruman’s Mobile Edge blog and follow the latest developments in mobile technology at InfoWorld.com. Follow Galen’s mobile musings on Twitter at MobileGalen. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.