Mobiledern Phone Chargers, Take 2.
You can get your phone charged anywhere. You can use battery, telephone line or even wireless charger! Read below.
Battery powered phone charger (another one)
Fixed line telephone port phone charger (strange)
Wireless Electricity Becomes a Reality
By Lance Ulanoff, PC Magazine
03/12/2002
Imagine a world where all your portable devices can be charged and powered simply by placing them on a desktop. Chip
manufacturer MobileWise has gone well beyond imagining such a world and this week unveiled "a conductive solution" that it
believes can make it all possible.
During a mid-day press conference in chilly New York City, MobileWise showed off a handful of functioning prototype
powerbases and retrofitted mobile devices that all use the company's new MobileWise chipset and enable "Wire-Free" electric
power. One chip, the tiny Adapter Controller, goes inside the mobile device and the other, the Contact Controller, gets built
into the power base station. These power bases, which were shown in a wide variety of shapes, sizes and colors, are each
covered in an array of gold-plated contacts. The retrofitted mobile devices also have a pair of contracts. With properly
configured handheld devices, the bases can, according to company CEO Andy Goren, change any flat surface into a
charging/power station.
The patent-pending technology behind the MobileWise is, on the surface, quite simple. The adapter chip inside the handheld
device will, when placed on a base station, receive a very small electrical signal and message from the base controller chip
that will power up the adapter chip. The base controller chip will sense for polarity. If there is none (say you place your
hand on the base) then it does nothing. If it does find polarity and then a signal from the adapter chip, it will then read
information about the voltage level necessary to run the mobile device and begin charging and powering it. Because of the
array of contacts—from dozens to hundreds, depending on base size—there's no need to place the device in a special spot or
position on the base. In fact, during the demonstration we saw the bases accept multiple devices, charging and powering them
all at once.
The solution is not actually entirely "wire free", however. The base station is plugged into an AC adapter and can deliver up
to 30V DC to an individual device. It's also, according to Goren, completely safe, and if any charge were delivered to a
person, it would be at the level of a low-voltage battery, virtually imperceptible to humans and certainly not harmful, he
added. The final base units will also, he said, be waterproof and protected from electrostatic charges.
Despite calls for MobileWise to manufacture the bases, Goren said the company plans instead on delivering the chipsets to
partners who will likely build the adapter chip and proper contacts into their products and OEM the power base manufacturing
to another company. MobileWise showed a variety of colors and form factors for the bases.
Acer has already partnered with MobileWise and, according to Goren, may ship a MobileWise-enabled notebook by Q1 of next
year. But MobileWise has, it seems, even more intriguing plans on the horizon. The company is already in discussion with a
couple of major office furniture manufacturers to build the power array bases and controller chips into furniture.
Apparently, these bases are for more than just mobile devices. Properly-equipped televisions, lamps and more could be powered
by the bases—Goren even had an HDTV that worked with one of the larger ones. Later next year, MobileWise expects to add data
handshake capabilities to the chipset, allowing, once the signal is split, data delivery over the same contacts.
While no shipping units currently exist, MobileWise said the adapter chips run roughly $1.25 a piece adding, it said, just a
few dollars in manufacturing costs to mobile devices and the base stations could, in units of 100,000 cost roughly $11 to
manufacturers. Goren said he expects a mid-sized base (roughly 12 by 18 inches) to sell for $160 street. Not every mobile
device will have to be retrofitted, by the way. MobileWise says it expects to see a handful of aftermarket mobile device
adapters available sometime next year, as well.
Read the full article with more pictures at PC Magazine
Links:
MobileWise
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