The wireless charging pad that’s made specifically for the HTC DROID DNA was revealed today a bit more silently than the smartphone, mainly because it’s not manufactured by HTC – and because it’s not really all that new. This LG-made device will be appearing at Verizon at the same time as the DROID DNA itself for a cool $59.99 USD. This device is rather large, eclipsing the DNA by quite a bit – in other words, you’ll have a hard time missing it.
This machine simply plugs into your wall and works with the wireless abilities of the DROID DNA to power your battery at a rapid speed. Oddly it doesn’t appear that the folks at LG have made any effort to be tiny like Nokia has with their own wireless charging pad effort. Instead we’ve got a rather bulky device that appears to be more like a pillow for the smartphone than a charger.
NOTE: This device was actually announced in March of 2011 and has been on the market since this spring. It is, however, coming to Verizon here for the first time, and is $10 cheaper than it was originally offered for earlier this year at electronics stores.
This beast will be charging up the DNA’s 2,020mAh battery at least once a day, especially considering the massive display and pixel density – no to mention the brightness – on the smartphone. Charging works with Qi standard technology, a standard put forth by the official Wireless Power Consortium. This likely means that the wireless charging pads Nokia has released will work just as well as this LG solution, as they use the same standard.
For more information on the DROID DNA by HTC, have a peek at the timeline below. There you’ll find hands-on action as well as pricing and release information. You’ll also find more specifications for the device, fun facts, an FCC listing, and a partridge in a pear tree. Stay tuned for our full review of the DROID DNA as well, coming up soon!
Those of you hoping to take part on the deal Nokia is offering up with some of their new Lumia models, that being a free wireless charger with purchase, will be glad to know that the official claim page is up now. It’s not quite active, but it certainly is up – letting you know that on the 16th of November you’ll be able to come back and grab that charger with a fist full of free. This offer is available here in the USA to AT&T owners of the Lumia 920 and may very well be spreading to more customers soon.
This site will also be working for Phones4U customers in the UK and Ireland, this working for purchases of both the Lumia 920 and the 820 as well (you’ll need the replacement plate for the 820, of course). Phones4U notes: “Free Wireless Charging Plate offer only applies to customers who have purchased a qualifying Nokia Lumia 820 or Nokia Lumia 920 promotional handset available through any P4U store, online or call centre between 02/11/12 and 31/12/12.” This might very well mean that it’s Nokia, not just the carrier, who is making this offer happen.
If so, Nokia will be bringing the heat to many more carriers in the near future – we must assume. Nokia’s wireless charging integration is a relatively simple thing (or will seem like it in a few years time), but at the moment they’ve got it unique to their brand. With the Lumia lineup working with wireless charging AND having this charging plate available for free with purchase of the original unit, Nokia places themselves in a great position – a great value offer being given to consumers. We’ve had our look at the charger already and have found it quite addicting.
Wireless charging has made headlines in recent weeks, but a new Qualcomm Halo trial kicking off in the UK is targeting the devices that live in your garage rather than in your pocket. Just as Google’s Nexus 4 and Nokia’s Lumia 920 each support wireless charging, rejuicing via simple desk pads rather than the fumble of slotting in a microUSB cable, so chip and wireless specialist Qualcomm sees the future of electric and hybrid urban mobility being wire-free. There’s a big difference, though, between a fifty buck charging plate for your phone and a way of cutting the cord for electric vehicles and potentially opening up the road as a dynamic power highway. SlashGear caught up with Qualcomm and some select partners to find out what makes Halo special, and why it’s just as much at home on a 200mph racing car as it is your city runabout.
Qualcomm’s trial scheme – in association with Renault and others – kicks off a two year project in London, UK, to see the feasibility and issues around wireless rather than traditional conductive charging. It’s based on Qualcomm’s Halo technology, which puts special inductive coils in both the road and the chassis underneath your car and, when the two line up, can fire across power with much the same efficiency as a regular cable might deliver.
Inductive systems of this sort aren’t new – in fact, industrial facilities have been using similar technology, running automated machinery around factory floors fueled by powerline tracks embedded in the concrete, for more than two decades now – but they’re yet to spread in any effective way from relatively closed systems.
London’s busy and convoluted streets are anything but a closed, controlled system, but that’s exactly why the city was selected by the Qualcomm-led project. It offers a mixture of road conditions, weather types, and usage scenarios, and a combination of sedans, taxis, vans, and other vehicles are expected to take part over the two year period.
Halo is a big step away from plugging in your EV (electric vehicle) to a mains electric point. Instead, you simply drive up to a power-embedded parking space and – being guided in, either by a dialog on the dashboard display or on your smartphone – roughly line up the coils in order for the electricity to start flowing. Early iterations only supported the sort of power you’d get from a slow, overnight charger – around the 3 KWh point, good for a full charge in around seven hours – but the technology now offers a 3hr charge with 7 KWh versions, and even a 1hr charge with the fastest 20 KWh standard.
Qualcomm Halo and Renault Fluence demo:
Renault is the big partner, or at least the one most likely to be seen on roads, with its specially crafted Fluence EV carrying Halo technology (along with a set of regular charging plugs). Citroen is also taking part, with a compact EV, while the more esoteric Delta E-4 will be a rarer sight though probably more eye-catching thanks to its gullwing doors. The Delta also has the most entertaining dashboard, a Tesla-style full touchscreen for navigating through charging programs and efficiency reports. In contrast, the Renault shifts Halo duties to a smartphone app – which we played with on a Samsung Galaxy S III – which helps position the car over the pad as well as begin, end, and monitor charging. The Citroen has a cutesy pod on the instrument binnacle that shows power status.
Unfortunately, the general public won’t be able to snap up a Halo-enabled car during the trial. Instead, they’ll be limited to select fleet users, including cab company Addison Lee, with a further cab deployment planned for sometime in 2014. In fact, the team behind the trial see cabs as being ideal customers for wireless charging, with each waiting period in a taxi rank the ideal opportunity to top up a battery. Initially, though, partner Chargemaster will be adding Halo to six of its London based privately-run “POLAR” EV charging locations, though the goal is to upgrade all 4,000+ points across the UK.
Nor will those with existing EVs be likely to see an upgrade. Qualcomm tells us that the cost of retrofitting Halo – as well as the regulatory and safety hurdles – means the relatively small userbase of current drivers isn’t really a target. Instead, the company is aiming for more widespread adoption with OEMs and upcoming models. It’ll also need to convince buyers to tick the EV box at the point of ordering; Renault says it is attempting to price its models at roughly the point of the diesel-powered equivalent, but there’s infrastructure required for the wireless charging pad if you want one for your garage at home, and you can’t simply plug Halo into a regular power socket. That’s currently along the line of roughly £2,500-3,000 ($4,000-4,800), not including the background infrastructure, though to be fair that’s roughly akin to a wired setup.
In the future, though, your Halo-equipped car may not even need to stand still in order to be recharged. Right now, fixed charging points make sense, from a cost-of-infrastructure standpoint as well as given that most cars sit unused overnight and for several hours during the day. However, Qualcomm also envisages a time when dynamic charging is used: Halo embedded in continuous strings along the roadway, with EVs constantly being powered as they drive over them.
Qualcomm Halo official video:
It’s cost not technology holding back such deployment today. In fact, the current Halo pads support dynamic charging already; right now, though, actually ripping up the road to bury them in place is unfeasible. Qualcomm and others will need to successfully position Halo as a standard, too, in order for the technology to be so broadly adopted that ubiquity makes commercial sense. There are more partners in the trial to be announced, the company told us, and other car manufacturers have been invited to take part, but it’s far from an industry standard yet.
The first evidence of that is likely to be in FIA Formula E, the freshly-announced EV racing cousin to F1. Set to begin in May 2014, it will see new EV racetracks in ten cities across the world, with ten teams pitting their all-electric cars against each other. Right now, the plan is for a relay race setup of sorts – each team would have two cars, driving one for roughly 20 minutes, before leaving it in a pit-stop to recharge while a second car was driven for a further 20 minutes, and then finally returning to the first, “refueled” car for the final 20 minute dash – but the closed environment of a racetrack makes it ideal for dynamic installation.
And don’t doubt that EVs can deliver when it comes to high-speed performance. Drayson Racing Technologies showed us its B12/69 EV, a 200mph+ Le Mans style race car equipped with Halo charging and good for a 3.0 second 0-62mph sprint. The racing team used the B12/69 EV as a Halo testbed during the last Goodwood Festival of Speed, setting a new hill climb record back in July and relying solely on the Qualcomm system for recharging during the entire weekend. In fact, the EV version of the car out-performs its predecessor, which hid a 5.5-litre biofuel engine at the rear instead.
In the end, Halo is a play for a growing market: one where EVs are looked upon more favorably by governments and regulators than traditional gas-guzzlers; where the infrastructure and driver-awareness exists to support them; and where consideration for the environment matches enthusiasm for the independence of having a car. Qualcomm and its partners make a pretty convincing argument for the Halo system specifically, however.
Rather than rely on the sluggish improvement in battery efficiency, or trying to squeeze more batteries into a vehicle to increase range, Halo targets ease of use and ubiquity. By topping up your EV multiple times during the day – without having to fiddle with a power cable or in fact do anything more than park on a certain spot – you can extend your range while also trimming the number of heavy batteries you’re carrying. We’ll have to wait to see how the data crunches at the end of the trial to know if the reality matches the Halo hyperbole, but just as smartphone users are being told they should simply drop down their handsets to recharge, so one day might we just park-up to top-up our zero emissions car.
Hints that LG would bring the Optimus LTE II to Verizon have persisted since the spring, which almost led us to wonder if the smartphone was still coming: not to fear, as it’s finally here under the Spectrum 2 badge. Other than the expected switch-ups in navigation keys and the mix of both CDMA with global GSM roaming, the design will feel very familiar to anyone who’s been on a trip to South Korea lately. The Spectrum 2 preserves the 4.7-inch AH-IPS display, dual-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4, 8-megapixel camera, 16GB of storage and support for wireless charging for those who buy a charging pad. We’re also expecting a relatively light tweak of the software that keeps it running Android 4.0 for now, with LG’s support for Tag+ stickers and QuickMemo being the standouts. We do wish we were looking at a quad-core Optimus G instead. For the moderate $100 post-rebate price, however, we’ll take the two fewer processor cores — especially when the Spectrum 2 is already on sale online and should be in retail stores sometime in the next few weeks.
It’s time for some more international flavor over at Verizon with the Optimus LTE2 hitting their 4G LTE airwaves re-named LG Spectrum 2 with a remix on the apps and features. Inside this device you’ll find a dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor from Qualcomm and a lovely 4.7-inch HD display up front with 1GB of RAM inside and a $99.99 price tag after $50 mail-in rebate. It’s also got 16GB internal storage, a microSD card slot for 32GB more, and of course 4G LTE connectivity.
This device also works with wireless charging with a replaceable battery cover that comes in the box. We’re in contact with Verizon now to get more information on this aspect of the device, so stay tuned. You’ve also got NFC to use with LG Tag+ stickers we’ve seen on the LG Intuition and LG Optimus G in the past, and DLNA to project your videos and photos wirelessly to your HDTV.
You’ve got the near-newest processor inside from Qualcomm – that’s the dual-core S4, less powerful than the newer S4 Pro quad-core, but still perfectly awesome. You’ll find this same processor on the recently released Motorola DROID RAZR HD, the Samsung Galaxy S III, and the DROID Incredible 4G LTE as well. You’ve also got an 8 megapixel camera on the back and LG’s own unique set of apps inside.
You’ll be working with LG’s advanced image editor and Video Wiz as well as viewdini and Verizon’s full collection of video apps too. Take care of your data with Verizon’s set of helpful carrier-specific apps and bring it all home with LG’s own QuickMemo: take a screenshot and leave a note on it with your finger instantly. This device is also Global Ready for international travel, has Bluetooth 4.0, and is available in stores starting today!
Design by committee might not be the death knell for technology after all. Over four months after the Alliance for Wireless Power was founded in earnest, the coalition has already greenlit a specification for its partners to work from. The guideline lets device makers start building devices that charge through a magnetic resonance technology more forgiving of distance and material than Qi while simplifying the process through short-range wireless formats like Bluetooth 4.0. While the A4WP group hasn’t made all the details public, it’s holding meetings this week to speed up the commercialization process — it’s here that we’ll learn whether the corporate bureaucracy is just as quick at getting wireless charging hardware into our hands as it is handshaking on standards.
Google has thrown in its lot with wireless charging, equipping the LG Nexus 4 with a companion desktop charging stand called the Wireless Charging Orb. A compact bubble finished in black plastic and rubber, and with a sliced-off docking plate that props the Nexus 4 up at an angle, the new dock will rejuice your Googlephone as well as hold it up for video viewing.
Drop the Nexus 4 on the magnetic dock and it will automatically kick into “Daydream” mode, a new addition to Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, and show photo albums, news from Google Currents, and other content. We’ve seen similar tech used back in the days of the Palm Pre and the Touchstone charger.
Earlier today it was confirmed that Google – among others – had joined the Power Matters Alliance, which bizarrely is actually pushing a different type of wireless power standard than the Nexus 4 uses. That’s because LG is a member of the Wireless Power Consortium, which is advocating the Qi standard.
Still, it does mean that the Nexus 4 will work with other Qi-compatible chargers, and it’s worth noting that Google-acquired Motorola Mobility is also part of the Wireless Power Consortium, along with Samsung, HTC, and others. We’d not be surprised to see Google push for a pulling-together of the various standards, using its heft in the marketplace to put pressure on each charger player.
No word on pricing or availability for the Google Wireless Charging Orb at this stage.
The Power Matters Alliance, which is a wireless power standards group formed by Duracell’s Powermat and Procter & Gamble (parent company of Duracell), is aiming to create wireless power standards for smartphones and other devices under the IEEE’s guidelines. Big companies such as AT&T, Google, and Starbucks have signed up and are now backing the group.
However, the Power Matters Alliance is facing stiff competition from other wireless power standards groups, such as the Alliance for Wireless Power and the Wireless Power Consortium. The WPC is pushing for the Qi standard, which is PMA’s biggest rival and it’s also backed by a number of large hardware vendors like Samsung, Motorola, LG, and HTC.
However, now that AT&T, Google, and Starbucks are on board at PMA, the alliance could make some solid progress in their pursuit for a wireless power standard. Starbucks is planning to pilot a new program where it will bring Duracell Powermat charging stations to 17 Boston locations, and it could lead to a nation-wide rollout in the future.
Not only will the addition of more big-name companies help out the alliance, but the companies themselves that formed the alliance (like Duracell) will see a major boost in publicity and sales. Other companies that are backing PMA include Delta Airlines and General Motors, as well as celebrities like Jay-Z and big-name attractions like Madison Square Garden in New York City.
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