New Furniture by Ikea to Charge Smartphones Wirelessly; Home Smart Range Looks to be a Hit
Furniture giant Ikea will release their new Home Smart furniture line with its built-in charging spots for most mobile devices in Europe and North America this April.
The new furniture line equipped with wireless spots include desks, lamps and bedside tables make up the Home Smart furniture with the requirement of being plugged into a safe power source. The wireless charging technology used is called Qi.
Currently, the latest Qi technology is the most popular and widely used standard in the wireless charging technology which works through an embedded magnetic coil which generates an electromagnetic field. The devices supported by the Qi technology then convert this small field into a powerful energy to charge a device battery.
Wall Street Journal also reported that Ikea plans to sell wireless charging kits as add-on to their existing furniture.
Swedish Ikea believes that these mobile phones are very vital and important parts of people's lives nowadays in their homes and they need to be connected to the world made possible by the Qi technology. According to Ikea's range manager Bjorn Block, the new line addresses the numerous needs of consumers to make these devices actively powered using wireless charging spots.
Ikea states that Qi wireless technology is currently not compatible with all mobile devices. The list of the smartphones which works well with the Qi technology includes Google Nexus 6, the soon to be released Samsung Galaxy S6 and many of the Nokia Lumia mobile devices. One setback is the Apple iPhone users which are still not compatible with the charging spots.
The Ikea Home Smart line deems to solve smartphone users' problem of running out of battery life by coming up with furniture with wireless charging spots. And they are not the only ones who are joining the wireless technology game today as they aim to be the first to raise a solution to this problem.