Recently you might have heard of Qi Wireless charging, thanks to Apple and IKEA releasing new products that support it.

QI is an open interface standard for wireless charging developed by the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) in 2008. Yep it is not new, however has only recently become mainstream. “Qi” is the Chinese word for “energy flow“, pronounced like the “chee“in “cheese“.

It is wireless power transfer using inductive charging.

You just just places your device on a base station where only the base is connected by a wire to the power supply. Currently a number mobile companies are working with this standard. These include market leaders like Apple, Samsung, LG, HTC, Sony and many more.

The principle behind this is very simple.

The system consists of two devices, the charging base station (Qi sender) and the mobile phone (Qi receiver) where both should be Qi standard compatible.

The base station activates only when the device is placed on it. To check this the base station sends an intermittent signal to which the mobile responds by communicating the received signal strength. Once a device replies the required energy is calculated and the wireless charging process begins.

In this process the energy transferred wirelessly through electromagnetic waves. For this we require two coils; one transmitter coil for the base station and one receiver coil for the device.

The transmitter coil generates an oscillating magnetic field which in turn based on the fardays law of induction induces an alternating current in the receiver’s coil.

Efficiency of the inductive power transfer relies on close spacing of the two coils, as well as shielding on their surfaces.

In 2009, WPC published the Qi low-power specification which delivers up to 5W which is usually used for charging mobile phones.

In 2009 the Qi specification was extended to medium power which will deliver up to 120 W, to power displays and laptops.

By 2015, a high-power specification was developed to deliver up to 1 kW to power high power utilities.

The advantage to the Qi standard is that once a device is Qi compatible it can be charged on any Qi charging transmitter, regardless of the manufacturer, make of the device. For example an Apple user can use IKEA’s Qi Wireless Charging table to charge their compatible iPhone.

Recently even McDonalds in the UK have introduced wireless charging points in their restaurants.

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Yesterday Apple announced the new iPhone 8 and iPhone X. Both these new handsets will support Wireless Charging.

You can find Qi Wireless Charging devices on Amazon, starting usually from £16.

Wireless charging in itself is not new technology and a few other manufacturers have been trying to get it into the mainstream for years.

In an unlikely move for Apple their new phones support an open interface standard called Qi charging.

Before you ask it’s pronounced ‘CHEE’ and comes from the Chinese word for Energy Flow.

Qi charging is a standard set by the WPC, the wireless power consortium.

They have been established since 2008 and is now on version 1.2.2 of the standard.

It works in a similar principle to ZigBee – meaning all tech that uses it will in theory work with each other. This means you will be able to use any Qi device or pad to charge your new iPhone 8 or iPhone X. However Apple do plan to also have their own version of Qi with ‘expanded specification’ they they call ‘AirPower’.

One company that must have seen this coming is IKEA.

In 2015 they released a range of Qi Wireless charging furniture and lamps. Allowing you to buy cheap, integrated wireless charging solutions.

This is the second time they have been spot on with their tech integrations, they also released a range of Smart Bulbs that work on ZigBee. The same standard as Philips Hue.

Other mainstream adopters of Qi are McDonalds, they also started rolling out Qi charging points in their restaurants in 2015.

Apple fans everywhere will rejoice that no longer are they forced to buy expensive certified cables, that often break.

We are pretty excited by this move by Apple as it’s yet another move by a big player into a shared smart ecosystem. Moving away from walled gardens and closed tech!

What do you think of Qi Wireless Charging? Let us know in the comments.

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