Forget pads – Pi has the recipe for truly wireless charging

You’re gonna be hearing a heck of a lot about wireless charging soon, now that Apple has opened the floodgates and added the tech to the iPhone 8, 8 Plus and iPhone X. Having to stick your phone precisely on a charging pad, though? Ain’t nobody got time for that. The real wireless future looks more like the Pi charger, an innocuous, vase-like base unit that can refuel all your gadgets from up to a foot away. It uses clever beam-forming tech to work out where your smartphones, watches, headphones and tablets are, then send magnetic fields exactly where they need to be to top up your juice. It uses the same basic idea as the Qi charging standard, so expect most phones to play ball once the charger launches. It’s in the funding stage right now, so there’s no word on when it will actually go on sale, but as far as the concept goes, we’re getting set to bin our wireless charging pads as soon as we can.