Charging without electricity

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Scare your boss or impress your juniors with mobile phone charging units that are not dependent on electricity

This is possibly the coolest gadget of 2008, a gizmo that could easily become the talk of the town. For owners of certain mobile phones, it’s time to trade in brick-like chargers for wire-free options! WildCharge Inc presents an option to recharge Apple iPhone, iPod Touch and Blackberry Pearl and 8800 without any wires. Sounds too good to be true? Not quite.
On ordering a WildCharger customers receive a mat with a few shiny chrome stripes, the heart of the charging unit. The flat charging pad delivers up to 15 Watts of power, capable of simultaneously charging up to four small devices, such as cellular phones, portable music players and other similar electronic devices.
Here’s how it works. Equip the mobile device with a WildCharge Skin and place it on the conductive surface, at any orientation. The WildCharger Pad can simultaneously charge multiple devices as long as they are WildCharge-enabled at a speed that matches the traditional way. The WildCharge adapter attaches to the device’s back cover. This adapter has tiny external “bumps” (contact-points) that come in physical contact with the pad. The geometries of the charging surface and the contact-points guarantee that regardless of where the device is placed on the pad’s surface, a closed electrical circuit is formed between the surface and the device. For RAZR users, for example, the phone’s battery-cover is replaced with one that already has the WildCharge technology built in. Once replaced, the connector at the end of the adapter’s “charging arm” is inserted into the phone’s power plug. Nothing else is required. As for radiation or magnetic fields that damage credit cards, etc., there is no chance of that. And if you try to touch the mat, power is cut off automatically. WildCharge CEO Dennis Grant says there’s no ‘trickle charge’.
The WildCharge RAZR V3 adapter looks like the phone’s original back-cover with a small semi-flexible charging arm attached to it. The skin for BlackBerry Pearl 8110/20/30 fits snugly over the body of the BlackBerry. Embedded into the back of the protective skin is the WildCharge contact module that makes electrical connection with the surface of the WildCharger Pad.
Although one cannot help but smile when a phone charges without wires, the gadget does not come cheap; it’s well over Rs 2,500. Is that a good price to pay when adapters are available in Chandni Chowk for as little as Rs 50? You decide.
-- Mathures Paul

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