The promise of walking through your front door, placing your phone on a normal-looking table without any garish accoutrements, and effortlessly replenishing your phone battery isn’t the real world yet. IKEA’s new wireless-charging furniture line takes a big step toward that goal, but it won’t get us all the way there.
The biggest problem with wireless charging thus far hasn’t been the competing standards, or even that it’s not really “wireless”—you need to plug the charging surface into a wall outlet, after all. The biggest problem is that it’s been kind of kludgy. There are numerous wireless-charging accessories out there—all sorts of mats and connector-free stands that work with compatible phones and cases—but they’re smallish, sometimes finicky, and almost certainly don’t mesh with your decor. Besides, wireless charging is arguably less convenient at this stage than faster charging, and wireless accessories can’t match the amps or speeds of some modern wired components.
When wireless charging does eventually reach the masses, it’ll be in the home. Stations that support the Qi wireless charging standard, which is built into an increasing number of cases and phones, including the newly announced Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, are already in some cars and public places, including airports and hotels. Public wireless-charging stations that support a different technology—the Power Matters Alliance standard backed by Duracell Powermat and Procter & Gamble—are offered in some Starbucks and Madison Square Garden.
But wireless charging in a public space is an odd fit. It requires leaving your phone sitting there, untethered by any kind of wire, around a bunch of strangers. Now that phones are the centers of our personal-info universe, the risk is not worth the reward.
Moving the same built-into-furniture setup to an in-home setting makes a whole lot more sense. Doubly so when that furniture–a range of tables, lamps, desks, and standalone charging pads–comes from a company with the reach and design sense of IKEA. Recharging your phone no longer becomes an “activity,” it’s just something that happens whenever you set it down. And with IKEA backing the Qi standard, which is already well ahead of the Power Matters Alliance standard in terms of device support and number of locations, it’s a step toward not just large-scale adoption but a single standard.
There are still plenty of limitations though. The new IKEA pieces are closer to that “every surface is a charger” ideal, but they still need to be plugged in. You also can’t use it to charge all of your gear; the Wireless Power Consortium, which developed the Qi standard, says its transmitters are all 5W models, good enough for charging up a phone. 7.5W and 15W transmitters are in production—more useful for faster phone charging and charging tablets—but the kind of firepower needed to charge a laptop is still a ways off.
You also need to buy this first generation of wireless-charging lamps, tables, and desks based on the fact that it’s a wireless-charging lamp, table, or desk. In other words, if the style of these limited offerings doesn’t match your home decor or your taste, well, no IKEA wireless-charging lamp for you. That makes it a tougher sell, especially given that if you want to create your own electric furniture, there are plenty of Qi adapters that let you build them into the stuff you already own. IKEA will also be taking that route, selling several sizes of Qi modules, bundled with instructions for installing them into existing pieces.
Even if all of those challenges were surmountable, though, you’d still be left with the chicken and egg problem that defines the state of wireless charging today. Charging isn’t mainstream because it isn’t ubiquitous nor invisible enough. And an attempt to make it ubiquitous and invisible—such as the world’s largest furniture-store chain building it into its wares—is a tough sell, because wireless charging isn’t mainstream enough.
You can’t fault IKEA for trying to jumpstart the wireless-charging revolution, but this first effort probably won’t help Qi crack the mainstream. For one, more styles of IKEA furniture need to be available in Qi versions. Love that Blüppo nightstand, Flurkk lamp, or Smødjel desk? Well then, opt for the wireless-charging model. The range of gadgets you can charge is also prohibitive at the moment. Once a desk can magically, invisibly charge a laptop, that’s when you should take notice. Until then, there’s just not enough juice.
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