Is LG Bringing Real Wireless Charging To Their Next Flagship?

From the big fat plug in chargers, to portable power banks, to wireless charging, our method of charging our smartphones has evolved over time.

What hasn’t changed still is the very-exhaustible battery that powers our devices. No matter how big they make them, batteries somehow find a way to exhaust themselves. Add to that, battery tech hasn’t yielded any magic potion yet.

This is what is encouraging companies and developers to push the boundaries further and develop new, fast and effective methods of charging.

Wireless Charging has been there on the scene for quite a lot of time — Samsung and Nokia started employing magnetic induction standards such as Qi years ago.

But is wireless charging truly wireless in the sense of the term? Nope. You still need to plug in a wired object, and that object in turn has to be in contact with your phone. What fun!

What is it the ‘newness’ then that LG has come up with?

Well, as per BusinessKorea’s report LG has developed a device that charges wirelessly over the air using magnetic resonance. Instead of physically placing the device on a charging pad for the device to charge “wirelessly”, LG’s invention enables the phone to be charged from a distance of 7 cm (about 3 inches) away from the charging pad. It even increases the amount of power being delivered to the device to 7 watts.
The latter part looks particularly important as it finally means that wireless charging will also be able to deliver quick results.

We know, 7 cm isn’t that huge a distance, but you’d agree that this little distance indicates the miles that can be covered in the direction of wireless charging in the near future.

LG has finished developing the capability and the hardware but it hasn’t decided whether it will actually release it with the new phone or not.

It is reported that LG has been channelizing its efforts in this direction since March this year — when LG announced a new transmission module for wireless charging pads, which sees smartphones regain power at the same rate as a wired cable.

The South Korean company claims that this new wireless technology will even enable fully discharged phones rise back up to 50% in a mere 30 minutes!

We believe the new module will be entrenched into future wireless charging pads, with mass production starting later this year.

It’s a little peculiar though that LG’s latest flagship smartphone, the LG G5, doesn’t support wireless charging. We can only hope the next LG flagship, estimably, the LG G6 would come with it!

It’s worthwhile to note that LG isn’t the only company that is interested in developing magnetic resonance-based wireless charging. Chinese competitors like Huawei, Oppo and Meizu are all apparently eyeing this technology and might come up with devices in the near future. Apple might as well be gearing up for this new tech race as it has hired a bunch of engineers from wireless charging startup uBeam.

LG, however, has the upper hand because all these companies are still thinking of the solution, or at best, are in the process of developing this technology for their devices, whereas LG has already finished developing it and could launch it in any of the new flagship devices this year itself.

Looking at the flipside of it, if the short-distance technology backfires and fails to impress the users, then interest in this feature might just vanish without giving it a room for improvement.

Phew, looks like a tricky situation but LG has never been afraid of pushing the limits of mobile technology before and might do just the same this time as well.

Originally published at Chip-Monks.