Hoorah for the Charging Power of Magnets
The good old wall wart: it's a pain in the rear. Ugly, space-grubbing, with wires that get easily tangled, creating a bird's nest of rubber-wrapped copper behind furniture, the wall wart and the charging paradigm it represents are certainly out of date. With the multitude of today's devices that run on rechargable battery packs and require charges, the problem gets that much worse; now you have five chargers you have to carry around when you used to have one. But what to use instead?
Device maker Splashpower has an idea: electromagnetic induction, in a gadget they call the SplashPad. Placing any "SplashPad-enabled device" on the charging pad of the SplashPad connects the device with the pad, charging the device's battery in the process. All very cool, until you consider the "SplashPad-enabled device" part: they don't exist yet (and technically, neither does the SplashPad). Looking at Splashpower's devices page, it sounds like the company expects to convince mobile device manufacturers to switch over to using Splashpower's modules exclusively, essentially dumping all wired charging options (and their users) in the process. Nice thought, guys, but maybe you should be making these modules as an Add-on to existing device? Unless you're going to be giving the SplashPad away with any new SplashPad-enabled device, I can't see this one catching on without some adaption to the existing market, as cool as it is.
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By Will, September 12, 2006 @ 7:28 pm
What these guys realy need is a replacemnt battery for your phone that works with the pad and still allows you to charge the old fasioned way.