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Originally Posted by hacker
There are several small problems with this, the first being that it still requires wires!
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Well, certainly it still requires a wire to operate the pad (unless it's built into your desk or some such), but one wire where you previously required half a dozen seems like a significant improvement. Not to mention that you no longer half to find the right plug, or even take the time to wonder whether you need to plug in or not.
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Originally Posted by hacker
The other small problem is that they can't possibly monitor over-voltage accurately, unless the "pad" has specific zones to put devices on, or the "client" component that attaches to the device to be charged, has that logic built into it (i.e. increasing its size).
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If you look at the pics that Alex posted, you will see that, indeed, the power rectification has moved inside the device, so you do increase the electronics required by the device. But those components will quickly grow extremely small once this becomes commonplace.
It'll be a while before this is adopted, certainly. And it won't be terribly convenient if just one company adopts it. It'll need to be pretty well spread around to be really useful.
I wonder how strong that magnetic field is. Will it strip off the magnetic strip on my credit card? What about my flash memory cards? (Are those even affected by magnetism?) And it is just one more of the weird electromagnetic fields that alter our bodies in ways we won't understand for another 50 years. Still, this sort of innovation is pretty inspiring.