Freescale announces ‘turbocharger’ with wireless energy transfer

Freescale has announced a 15W wireless charger. The charger is based on the Qi standard and is mainly aimed at tablets, although smartphones should also be able to charge faster than with current wireless chargers.

According to Freescale, this is the first wireless 15W charger with support for the Qi standard. The manufacturer will announce the charger, but it will only be on the market in the first quarter of 2015. Manufacturers can certainly get to work with test products. In addition to tablets and large smartphones, Freescale is thinking of applications for mobile devices in the medical and industrial sector. Incidentally, according to the company, the charger could also charge smaller smartphones faster than the current Qi chargers.

Thanks to the power of 15W, the charger should charge devices with Qi support three times as fast as via the regular USB connection of 5W. As an example, Freescale gives a tablet with a battery capacity of 4000mAh, which can be charged via USB in eight hours, but could be ready after a few hours with the wireless charger. Incidentally, the charger also supports the wireless power transfer standards Wireless Power Consortium and Power Matters Alliance.