We've heard talks of revolutionary ideas when it comes to battery life and charging; higher capacity batteries, faster charging cables or even charging pads eliminating cables. But are those really revolutionary in a sense? Your phone still has to be connected to a thing, a device, which emitts electrical charge from itself onto your battery via a connector or in the case of the charging pad via copper coils surrounding the battery.
What would be considered revolutionary in the "charging business"? Well, what if you can you use your phone without connecting it to any or placing it on any charging pad, and i'd still be charging nonetheless? Sounds very sci-fi-sh, right? Well, no longer.
Xiaomi has come up with a very creative solution to the charging problem via Air Charge Technology. Sounds fancy, doesn't it? It's actually a pretty simple concept. You plug-in a radio-emitting device that shoots beams of radiowaves to your phone. In turn, the phone, converts it to energy thus filling up your battery. Pretty nifty.
How exactly does "Air Charge" work?
The idea behind the technology is simple; You put the charging pod into your home and plug it into the socket. Placed inside the device are a couple of calibrating and interference antennas that can detect wherever your phone is within the house and beam out milimeter wide waves through a technology called "Beamforming". Beamforming means that signals can be transmitted directly into a device instead of aimlessly putting it around a certain area and zone; it's more concentrated and of course efficient.
The phone is equipped with a beacon and receiving antennas. Basically, they receive the signal through Beamforming and convert the radio waves into electricity through a circuit and directly into the battery.
Is "Air Charge" efficient?
As of right now, the conversion rate goes to about 5 watts which is of course lower than 12.5 watts and 18 watts charging that comes with charging pads and cable chargers. The downside of this, of course, is that to recharge your battery completely it would take hours; there's still no fast charging to this technology that isn't threatening to health. But are ther other health concerns?
Is charging your phone through the air dangerous?
The first thing that would come to anyone's mind is "Well, seems like a fancy way to get cancer, doesn't it?". It does, but it's not. The waves are so small in length and emitt non-ionizing radiation particles that they cannot possibly damage cells directly. They're perfectly safe; as safe as radio antennas are. Conspiracy theorists, back-off off this one, alright?
Man i'm excited. Where do I get this?
Well, this article did really excite you didn't it? As of right now the technology is still in its alpha phases, meaning its concept and functionality have been thought about but still need to do a lot of testing before it can be publicly available. But if there's one thing to take away from this article is that the future seems promising, exciting, new and fantastic. Sci-fi isn't just movie and book fantasy; it's becoming reality and where here to take it all in.
