Everyone hates charging their smartphones as it involves plugging the cable into it and waiting for 1 or more hours before you can unplug it. While Apple has not added the so called ‘wireless’ charging’ feature to its iPhone lineup, its competitors have certainly experimented with the concept in their public releases. Even that kind of wireless charging isn’t something that can be considered futuristic. Sure it is impressive but it still involves you putting your smartphone on the charging pod while it is charging, which is slightly better than plugging a cable into it.
That might soon change as a new accessory called Cota Base Station by Ossia has been revealed at the CES 2016, which promises to actually wirelessly charge the iPhone or any other gadget for that matter, while it is 10 feet away from the charging pod. This means your device will start charging as soon as you enter the coverage radius of the Ossia’s charging accessory without needing you to place the device on some pod or plugging it to a cable.
So how does Ossia’s Cota Base Station charges the device? Well it is taking advantage of some really clever technology that communicates and transfers charge to any device that has a RF receiving chip, which doubles as a beacon. While any device that has the built-in RF chip will be able to charge using the base station, older devices without this chip can still take advantage of the charging station provided they are wearing a wireless charging case.
Gizmodo while explaining how the technology behind Ossia’s Cota Base Station works writes
One hundred times every second that Cota chip sends out an RF signal like a homing beacon that’s picked up by the thousands of tiny antennas inside the larger Cota base station. Every last one of those tiny antennas detects that RF ping from a slightly different angle, and the base station responds by then sending wireless RF power back out in the exact same direction. Those wireless RF power signals take the exact same path as the original RF signals from the device did, just in the opposite direction, ensuring they arrive exactly where they’re needed to efficiently charge a device.
This wireless charing station can only charge one device at a time, which needs to be within the radius of 10 feet. The company says it will introduce more powerful units that can cover the whole house in the future.
While Ossia is not ready for consumers yet, it will most probably be until the end of 2016 as the company has announced its plans of launching it later this year.
