Qi charging hit our phones several years ago and while it was very early tech many of us jumped in with both feet. Early versions of the chargers heated the phones to unsafe levels while effectively only trickle charging the phones. The slow charging of the phones by way of Qi turned many off using Qi chargers, especially now with the availability of turbo/fast charging in many phones. In the future the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) hopes to turn this around.
The WPC have announced that the latest version of the Qi specification will have the ability to deliver a full 15 watts of power to devices that support it. Sounds familiar doesn’t it? This is the same power that most fast/quick/turbo chargers deliver to your phone via a plugged in USB cable. The new Qi standard will wirelessly charge your device as fast as a turbo charger. For many the first concern is the heat created by this charging method, especially at this wattage but hopefully with the new specification only available to consortium members and not third party manufacturers this can be sorted out before a release to the public.
The WPC have also said that the new standard should also be made to be backward compliant, meaning that while the new chargers won’t be able to charge your current device at the faster rates, they will still be able to charge your phone at the rates currently offered by Qi charging.
Not long ago I said on our podcast that I didn’t need Qi any more now that I had turbo charging. Hopefully soon I’ll be saying that I do not need turbo charging any more as I have Turbo-Qi. Will you be jumping on board too?
By the time the consortium releases the specifications and the products hit the market, we would be demanding much higher charging capacity. It’s the fate of the WPC to always be playing catch-up. Always the bridesmaid, never the bride.
Qi used to charge my Nexus 5 reasonably quickly but the bigger battery in the Nexus 6 takes forever on Qi – especially, like you say, when compared to the turbo charger. It’s still convenient though, just to drop the phone on the charge pad on my desk, even if it is just at a relative trickle.