Wireless Charging Is Coming To Wearables, Eventually

Before Apple unveiled its watch last month, many people were anticipating that true wireless charging was about to finally go mainstream. Instead, all we got was another smartwatch with a charging cable.

The Apple Watch uses a magnetic induction charger--which technically is a form of wireless charging in that the power is being transferred between magnetic coils--but you still have to hook it up with a charging cable. That left many people underwhelmed. After all, you're going to have to take it off your wrist to charge it.

As people start strapping more power-hungry electronics onto their bodies--and into their homes--there's a definite need to find something more convenient than running around with a bunch of charging cables or replacing the batteries in each device every few months. Hardware makers of all stripes in the tech industry have been looking closely at wireless charging. But a world without the clutter of cables and disposable batteries is still too early and messy to tell when and how it's going to all take off.

There are a few industry groups pushing various wireless standards--the Wireless Power Consortium, Alliance for Wireless Power and Power Matters Alliance, with the latter two joining forces in February. And there's plenty of reason for competition--the market for wireless charging is estimated to be worth $8.5 billion by 2018, according to IHS. But the hardware manufacturers are still unwilling to tie themselves down to any one technology yet. And with no infrastructure built out yet, it's hard to tell which standard will take hold.

"I believe in the concept. I believe in it long term," said Jef Holove, the general manager of fitness wearable maker Basis, which was recently acquired by Intel  and now sits under the computer chip giant's New Devices Group. "The question right now is first of multiple standards and the install base. We’re a mainstream product, so we have to think not about what's cutting edge, but what do most people have."

Some phones have started adopting wireless charging. For example, Google's Nexus 4 and Nexus 5 have magnetic induction charging where you can place the phones on a charging pad. But as the most popular technology for wireless charging, induction charging has been around for more than a hundred years. It works with a transmitter induction coil creating an electromagnetic field and transferring that power to another coil when they come into contact. The technology can only charge a single device at time, so that makes it less appealing in world defined by our many devices hungry for power. And some of the different standards around wireless are based on this technology but use different specifications.

One Minnesota-based wearable startup, Playtabase, is taking the plunge into wireless charging. The startup is developing its Reemo wristband, a device that controls connected home devices with gesture--you point at a device and gesture to, say, turn on or off a light or move your thermostat's temperature up or down. It has just partnered with British wireless charging startup Drayson Wireless.

Better than using a charging pad, Drayson claims it can charge a device 10-15 feet away using its improved resonant inductive coupling technology. Drayson Wireless was founded by Paul Drayson, a former Minister of Science for the UK government during the Blair and Brown administrations. Before trying to get into consumer electronics, the company was known for its work on wireless charging in electric race cars. The wireless charging technology its applying to Reemo was first developed at Imperial College London.

Playtabase, which is a part of a Seattle smart home accelerator run by Microsoft, has yet to sell its first product. The plan is to start selling the Reemo system of the wristband and hub in spring 2015 without wireless charging--and it is currently running an Indiegogo campaign. But by the second version, Reemo is hoping to have worked in Drayson's wireless technology. The hub with the radios would also house the wireless charging transmitter.

Playtabase is targeting the Reemo wearable at first for elder care. The device could be used as a way to control their home without having to move around as much as well as using it to monitor the elderly in order to alert family members or caretakers if anything is out the normal. Already, Playtabase maintains its device can work on a full charge for three days based on current prototype testing, but keeping the device always on the wrist with wireless charging is a bonus.

“For us, wireless charging is important in the aging in place market,” said John Valiton, the chief business development officer at Playtabase. “If we give a Reemo to someone now, taking it off to charge it is the biggest pain. You can monitor them 24/7 if you never have to charge it.”

But for most of the hardware industry, they're still just waiting to see which wireless technology finally starts taking off.

"There's going to have to be one category--maybe mobile--that has a killer use case that drives adoption," said Holove from Intel's Basis. "And then other things can get thrown in there. Once wireless charging takes off in the phone, having it in wearables makes sense."

Video: How the Reemo wearable works