
Apple is working with Energous on wireless charging - ailinykh
http://venturebeat.com/2016/09/15/proof-that-apple-is-working-with-energous-on-wireless-charging-is-hidden-in-plain-sight/
======
dantiberian
Paul Reynolds, who worked at uBeam, demolishes Energous planned business model
through physics [1] [2]. My opinion (and a lot of other investors) is that
Energous is a scam [3] [4]. Their device cannot get FCC approval to transmit
at the levels that they need to to send power, so it's a complete non-starter.

[1]: [http://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.co.nz/2016/04/those-
other-g...](http://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.co.nz/2016/04/those-other-guys-
pt-1.html)

[2]: [http://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.co.nz/2016/04/those-
other-g...](http://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.co.nz/2016/04/those-other-guys-
pt-ii.html)

[3]: [http://seekingalpha.com/article/3964405-wattup-mini-will-
sav...](http://seekingalpha.com/article/3964405-wattup-mini-will-save-
energous)

[4]: [http://seekingalpha.com/article/3960298-stunning-
admission-e...](http://seekingalpha.com/article/3960298-stunning-admission-
energous)

~~~
2AF3
Do you think uBeam is also a scam / impossible technology to deliver?

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adevine
My understanding, though, is that all of these wireless charging solutions are
significantly less efficient that wired power. Even if it's, say, 10% less
efficient, that's a huge, huge waste of energy on a large scale if this
technology becomes popular.

~~~
duaneb
Why would it not be absorbed by proportional savings in heating?

~~~
hyperpape
Depends where you live. We spend more of the year running AC here.

~~~
duaneb
Very good point.

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mariojv
This way they can remove the only plug on the new iPhones. :)

~~~
givinguflac
Honestly I'm fine with that if it means never having to plug my device in
again. "The signals can travel up to 15 feet, and up to 12 devices can be
charged at once." Sounds amazing.

~~~
oh_sigh
You know what also sounds amazing? Signals that can travel up to 15 miles and
up to 1 million devices charged at once.

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seanalltogether
My favorite is still the cradle with contact pins that were on the original
nexus one phones, no need to plug anything in, no need to align with magnetic
grippers, just drop it in the cradle and it worked. Why did that ever go away?

~~~
lj3
Protective covers. Most are too thick to work with a cradle designed for a
naked phone. Making a cradle with an adjustable width and depth is,
apparently, either too difficult or too expensive.

~~~
nsaje
What about spring-loaded retractable pins? They'd automatically adjust to any
case thickness.

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janekm
What a bullshit article. The "proof" that Energous is working with Apple is
that they claimed in a 2014 SEC filing to be undertaking Apple Compliance
testing... which they would need to do to make a charging adapter for an
iPhone (mfi program), which is 60% of the addressable market for their
supposed technology. So there's no smoke here.

~~~
MrQuincle
True. To be part of Homekit you also need to go through compliance testing. It
doesn't say anything over a close relationship with Apple. I wish I had,
because I think how Homekit works can be improved considerably!

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mtgx
Ossia's Cota technology is a direct competitor to Energous' WattUp, but its
transmitter device seems to be _huge_ \- I don't know if Energous' transmitter
device also has to be that big:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEfPgx51cas](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEfPgx51cas)

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emehrkay
I remember reading about this tech years ago in Business 2.0 magazine and
thought it was the future, it would be nice to see someone bring it to market
on a large scale. I also wondered a lot about the health implications, are
there any?

[http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2...](http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2007/04/01/8403349/)

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smsm42
So that'd be the third standard in addition to PMA and Qi? Or there are more
already?

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nxzero
Work on wireless power transfer has been going on over 100-years, even Tesla
worked on it:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_power_transfer](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_power_transfer)

Hard to imagine this being mainstream anytime soon. Is there any reason to
believe this will become mainstream in the near future?

~~~
tedsanders
As a physicist, I am similarly skeptical. It seems quite unlikely to me that
wireless power will take off within our lifetimes. However, if it does happen,
I suspect it will be because of one of the following hypotheses:

(1) Electronics continue to become more energy efficient, to the point that a
tiny wireless power trickle is sufficient to run them

(2) Perhaps computers will be an enabling technology, both in design (with E&M
modeling, algorithm-assisted antenna design) and in operations (computer
controlled beam steering)

Anyone care to share any other "post-mortem" hypotheses?

~~~
Filligree
On the assumption that it happens? Well, you covered the more likely ones. Let
me add one more.

3) Advances in molecular manufacturing (Drexler-style!) allows us to construct
atomically perfect transmitters and receivers. This, somehow, increases
efficiency to north of 90%. And increases range, too.

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Nanite
They didn't quite do their homework, see update below article:

"The SEC filing statement from 2014 blankets any future anticipated testing
and is not indicative of specific partners."

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JulianMorrison
Soon they will achieve the ideal of minimalism, a featureless black slab that
can only be distinguished from an obsidian block by turning it on.

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ihuman
I thought Apple already did wireless charging with the Apple Watch. Why is
this news?

~~~
brendan_a_b
"Energous’ technology involves more than just a charging mat to lay devices on
top of. The company’s transmitter broadcasts proprietary waveforms directly to
receivers and then surrounds those receivers with a radio frequency “pocket”
that charges devices. The signals can travel up to 15 feet, and up to 12
devices can be charged at once."

This quote sums up the difference

~~~
cmiller1
>The signals can travel up to 15 feet, and up to 12 devices can be charged at
once.

Wow, so if this technology became ubiquitous and transmitters were installed
en masse in public places... we might in the future simply not even THINK
about our device battery levels.

~~~
FireBeyond
It'd be awesome. Shame it won't be this technology, which is going to be
proprietary to Apple devices, though.

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namuol
The real issue is that our devices discharge much too quickly, and take too
long to recharge.

By increasing battery capacity, improving the efficiency of our devices, and
lowering charging time, the inconvenience of charging during the middle of the
day when heavy use is likely simply wouldn't happen nearly as much.

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arunabh010
Back in 2012, I picked up energy harvesting as one of my major project for
wireless communications masters at NUS. Towards the end of masters I came up
with a commercial idea of using energy harvesting for charging. Thus for
summer that year, I ended up attending founders institute with idea of somehow
commercializing wireless energy transfer. We got a team of friends, with my
roommate PhD in physics, and a friend from electronics, and another friend
from MS- mechatronics.

I proposed using wireless charging at short distance, after meandering for
weeks with best use case, we ended up pursuing wireless charging for robots.
Thus FLUXCHARGE1 came into existence.

When we realized that patent would be a major issue, which at that time was
with Witricity2, we had to give up on the idea.

I did a quick homework of the situation and things haven’t changed much in
four years. There are two major companies now pursuing it, (as mentioned here)
[http://www.energous.com/](http://www.energous.com/)
[http://www.ossia.com/](http://www.ossia.com/)

Also from R&D point of view my prof (Dr. Rui Zhang) from NUS is still pursuing
how to do wireless energy transfer5

Reference 1\. [http://www.slideshare.net/arunabh010/fluxcharge-wireless-
cha...](http://www.slideshare.net/arunabh010/fluxcharge-wireless-chargers-for-
mobile-robotics) 2\. [http://witricity.com/](http://witricity.com/) 3\.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12508409](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12508409)
4\. [http://spectrum.ieee.org/consumer-electronics/portable-
devic...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/consumer-electronics/portable-devices/is-
real-wireless-phone-charging-nearly-here) 5\.
[https://www.ece.nus.edu.sg/stfpage/elezhang/publication_SWIP...](https://www.ece.nus.edu.sg/stfpage/elezhang/publication_SWIPT.html)

