Charging Forward With QiCharging Forward With Qi

A status report on the universal wireless charging standard I first wrote about five years ago.

In the five years since I wrote a No Jitter post on Qi, at the time the Wireless Power Consortium's (WPC) new universal standard for inductive charging, its use in wireless devices such as smartphones, cameras, and MP3 players has proliferated.

I decided to revisit Qi after assisting someone with setting up the Qi charging station for his new Samsung Edge. As I remember thinking when I first wrote about it, Qi is pretty cool.

Catching Up on Qi
In a technology backgrounder, WPC describes Qi as "an established, evolving wireless charging standard that supports inductive and resonant charging, while ensuring full backwards compatibility with all Qi devices." (A worldwide network of WPC-authorized certification labs ensures that products bearing the Qi logo are backwards-compatible and interoperable, the WPC said.) Qi (pronounced "chee") is scalable from less than one watt to more than 2,000 W of power, and provides the ability to charge multiple devices simultaneously with "full spatial freedom."

As noted, Qi is in widespread today. Qi has a global installed base of more than 50 million devices, WPC reported in June. Examples of the QI ecosystem include:

Charging Forward
Wireless charging makes sense for consumers because Qi-enabled devices can use Qi charging stations regardless of the type of cord for the device. Users no longer have to deal with cord clutter and energy waste.

For companies with cubicle farms, Qi eliminates the extra power strips needed to accommodate BYOD sprawl, which usually entails multiple devices that employees want to use and then recharge at work.

For education, health inspectors generally speaking don't like power strips and extension cords for a variety of reasons. More wireless devices are making their way into classrooms, and Qi charging stations are beneficial in these environments, too.

As I like to do, I relate a company's decision to use Qi for wireless charging to the 14 key management principles from W. Edwards Deming. Here are those I feel most applicable:

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