Gadgetory

all right I'm John pers Oh vice president market development for the wireless power consortium and we're here at CES 2016 this is the wireless power consortium booth what we do is create the standard for wireless charging the ability to charge a personal device like a cell phone a toothbrush many other consumer handheld devices without plugging it in there's lots of ways to do it you can do it in the public public locations you could do it at home in your car and we're showing all the different systems that make that possible right so what we have on display here is an example of how wireless charging supports the consumers journey through life through the day starting perhaps in in a home environment where you have wireless charging your phone wireless charging say on a bedside table wakes you up in the morning most of us use our cell phones for a clock and an alarm and so forth take your phone into the kitchen where you have a wireless charging stand put it there while you make your waffles or eggs Gharib your cup of coffee you charge your phones continually at 100% charge the next step might be going into a car we have an automotive applications we have over 25 models I think it's 28 today Mercedes just added one an Audi just announced one today but there's about 28 models of cars that have Qi wireless charging built in put your phone down on a charging spot and it also takes information from your phone allows your your car to adapt to your personal preferences like seat position temperature radio stations favorite locations that sort of thing get out of your car your phone's fully charged over here we have an enterprise application where folks like Google and Deloitte and Facebook and so forth have designed wireless charging into their office buildings put your phone down on the desk it's charging application comes up gives you access to lighting HVAC door locks that sort of thing so what is charging is not just a way of easily charging your phone your phone charged all the time but it also gives you access to your environment in ways you didn't otherwise have all right well we just got a look at the wireless power consortium I want to make sure I say the word right uh-huh and we've got a look at some of the demos at the area that is actually right above our Android authority booth so you saw that and we also got a spiel from John here who was able to tell you about applications in the home in the car and of course in a business and now we're gonna do a little quick talk just to see what how things are going with the WPC and with things like qi wireless charging what i'm gonna go a little bit of vague on this one you know so you can go anywhere you want with okay what would the future of wireless charging look like in your eyes right now that's that's awesome question sufficiently big yeah the future part is charging as most of us in the wireless power consortium see it is phones that don't ever die okay phones that have small smaller batteries than they do today but don't die because we we move from one charging location to the other it's just embedded in our daily journey so if I was sitting here right now and you had a Qi wireless charging unit built-in I would I would probably have my phone on the table maybe I turn it upside down so you don't see exactly who's calling but whatever it's charging it's just charging as I go through my day absolutely and it's always around 80 or 90 percent my phone right now is at 99 percent because I this is what I do so I have it in the car of course we have a few charges in our booth I am but they're in McDonald's they're in hotels they're in public spaces and the idea is that these are so critical to our lives now there are safety devices there way we stay in touch they're entertaining devices and entertainment devices sometimes entertaining like when Siri says something I don't like but we always want them online and so to have chargers embedded in our environment ensures that we don't have this thing called battery anxiety which better anxiety's when my battery gets low and I start changing my behavior yeah right I stopped texting I stopped using internet searches and so start asking for a charger around I'm looking around for an AC outlet yeah sitting on the floor in the airport yeah exactly so my view all of us at the WPC our view is you don't need that as long as the systems are efficient they work well and they're ubiquitous it's a different way to keep charge you mentioned ubiquity how how tough I suppose I shouldn't say how tough but what what is it what does it look like when the market strategy is to get these wireless chargers into as many places as possible is it tough to create let's say the the infrastructure for it you know if you go to Starbucks or you go to the airport there are want the hard charging docks and everything like that but what does it look like when you're trying to actually create wireless charging areas and pretty much everywhere like we can't even talk about the Convention Center yeah you know if we could get a bunch in every corner of every yeah every block why not yeah yeah well there's ways to do that so it's the easy way is that the members of the WPC or some member company that has the pockets deep enough it just doesn't they just pay for it okay we don't do that because we feel that if there's value in it then the market will support it so we're we're a little different in that way we don't actually fund deployment of wireless chargers we let we let the market drive that and it might take longer but they're committed and so what we've seen in fact the last year has been a really exciting year for the WPC because that deployment has just taken off so over 4,000 locations now McDonald's in the UK and other test markets around the world hotels public spaces especially cars so there's now 28 as of today there's 28 models of cars this is a really good place to charge your phone oh absolutely we just won't plug them in I just don't want to be bothered plugging it in especially when you're driving but we just don't think that you wanna plug or flop it down put it down yeah the charges and oh by the way when you put it down to charge it things happen like the car knows you're charging your phone so it enables a personalization we talked about that personalization of the space and it doesn't have to be your car right you could get out in another city and put that same phone down in it another car and it adapts to your settings so the difficulty or the hurdles in establishing an international ubiquitous deployment is the those companies understanding the value their customers asking for it which is now happening yeah so last year 2014 most of our members were running around the world helping people understand what wireless charging was and selling this vision now it's reversed now it's a pull market so we have hotels coming to us and restaurants coming to us saying which one should I use yeah if they're not asking which standard should I use because there's only one standard it's really deployed they're not asking should I use wireless charging because they know how valuable it exactly they're saying well there's a hundred and fifty different types of transmitters I can install here network-attached stand along under the table in the table on the table there's all kinds of ways so just that cycle getting that cycle ramped up and last year 2015 we saw that go up okay so you mentioned earlier batteries that the fact that we don't want our phones to ever die where are we going to be seeing because uh for example the Nexus 6p that came out it actually went away with wireless charging whereas the previous version of the Nexus had it right and I think and and and the consensus for the most part was that they did that to focus on the fastest type of charging right I could put in anything USB type-c yeah is there is there an answer to that well wireless charging have the kind of speed that that a wire let's say USB type-c will be able to have right so the the USB see and quick charge however you call it quick charge turbo charge fast charge different names different companies all the same thing my phone is a little over is the Motorola Droid turbo and it's got a large battery and fast charge yes best phone I've ever had anyway it it's a it's a great USB see was seen as a way okay you don't necessarily need as much alright but the answer is they would have used fast charging if it was out it was a that came out middle of last year our spec for 15 watts we just released a 15 watt spec which enables the fast charging so this phone fast charging takes about 15 watts a little bit less than 15 watts to charge that's what you need and that spec was released in about the end of June or so in products and chips to make those systems are now on the market but Android need to get their phone out I should say Google need to get out and now you could do fast charging or you could do Wireless fast charging which is really the best of both worlds yeah exactly okay great well in terms of batteries you know we were discussing just before the interview the the the fact that really one of the only things that manufacturers are able to do right now is like you said the brute force strategy which is putting huge batteries into phones yeah exactly so if you if you're looking for a smaller battery in order to have a smaller form-factor then I guess providing all of the different types of charging would be kind of you guys as focus obviously and that's what we've been talking about it really is yeah so why does charging enables a number of things one of them is if you have wireless charging really deployed throughout your daily journey and that's well on its way then you better anxiety goes away but you can actually decrease the size of the battery right a smaller batteries charge faster with less heat and and they don't last a song but you don't need them to because you're never without the ability to charge in fact charts quickly so what that does is it decreases dependency on the lithium ion battery material decreases the cost of the phone the size of the phone it's a real benefit for consumers cheaper phones better for the environment it's just it's a good thing all around well then I'll tell you one thing one thing I do want to see are more external batteries yeah with wireless charging built-in yeah I'll just lay it right on top yeah that would be the thing that I'm looking for but we'll have to see if that's going to become more prevalent and whether about twenty of them in our booth right now but the dark yeah they're called power banks so on one side is a receiver and the other side is a transmitter so you put this power bank which might be a 2100 milliamp hour battery you know something that's gonna double your battery life set it down on a wireless charger and you charged you've got a fuel to actual bank gap right put your phone on top of that fill that in your purse your wallet whatever put that on the table if there's not a wireless charging spot at the table already put that down you got one now dad I think that would be for me personally at least that would be a perfect solution for us so there's a really good selection of those things yeah and they call them power banks yeah power banks I'll have to take a look at them especially maybe we'll pop back up to the data booth but you know what for now I want to thank you John for coming by and I really appreciate the interview and everything yeah from WPC John over here make sure you stay tuned to Android 34 even more and don't forget to check out even at the beginning of this video or if it's a separate video all of the stuff that they were showing at their booth that was right above ours so thank you once again John a pleasure always a pleasure kiai authority there we go keep it tuned Sandra 34 even more because we are your source for all things CES 2016