Published: 2022-08-26
Charger bowl
Wireless charging has been around for a while now, but it has not really taken off yet. I think it is a matter of details. To start with, it is not convenient enough. You have to align the charging pad with your phone for the best performance. The pad itself is yet another device lying around in the house taking up space. A regular charger is easier to stow away and hide when it is not used.
My suggestion is a charger bowl. We all have a bowl within arms length of our front door doormat. Most of us at least. A bowl where we dump car keys, cell phones, sunglasses and all kinds of stuff we have been carrying around and just want to put somewhere. We know where to find stuff when we need it and it is easy to pick up when we leave the house. Very practical, but not the prettiest arrangement.
This is my family's bowl on any given day. Imagine if it could also charge our devices.
Wouldn't it be great if our bowls could also charge our phones when we dump them in there? Maybe a little beep acknowledging a new device has been detected and will be charged.
Some functionality needs to be sorted in order for this to be the next blockbuster. Anything must still be able to go into the bowl. USB memory sticks, credit cards or anything else relying on magnetism can not be affected. The bowl also needs to be able to charge several devices at the same time so that the whole family can use the same bowl. It would be great if bowl charging was an open standard as well and not tied to just one company or system. I want to be able to change anything with a battery. If this can be achieved even the kids can learn to charge their devices. Just drop them in the bowl, wait for the beep, and the devices are ready when they wake up.
A bonus would be if the bowls could block smart car key signals to stop man-in-the-middle car theft. But still allow cell phone communication of course.
I’m not sure exactly how all this can be done technically. But that is the beauty of being a blogger. I don’t have to know. I’m just stating what needs to be done and someone else can solve it. I spoke to an electrical engineer friend of mine who thinks charger bowls could work. Some sort of coil should do it. A coil shaped into a bowl. Coils have a tendency to make weird noises when active. This has to be solved as well.