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Powermat: Wireless Charging for your iPhone

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The world is eagerly awaiting the next iPhone due out shortly, but there will be quite a few current iPhone 3G and 3Gs users who will still be using those phones for some time. So, if you’re one of those and you’re looking for a wireless solution for charging up your 3G or 3GS, you might want to take a look at the Powermat for the iPhone. They sent along a review copy and here’s my thoughts.

Does it work. Yep. If you do what’s advertised you can charge up your iPhone.

Here’s what you get in the box. You get the charging pad, the top and bottom of a case that you put on your iPhone, an AC adapter for the charging pad (you didn’t really think this was completely wireless did you?), and a USB to microUSB cable so that you can connect to a computer for syncing with your iPhone in the case.

Much like the Touchstone charger for the Palm Pre this works when the connection between the case and the charging pad is made. You’ll notice that there is a slot on the charging pad, and your iPhone in the case has to fit just so before you get the little beep that tells you it is charging. A slight jostle can knock it out of alignment, so if you are charging this up on your nightstand and you occasionally knock into the night stand like I do, you might knock it out of alignment.  Beyond that it all works as advertised. That said, you do have to put your iPhone in the case for the system to work, but that’s a matter of preference. This method of charging up takes a little longer than plugging your iPhone directly into the wall (in my testing about 20% longer), so that might be an issue for some. But if you’re used to charging up overnight that shouldn’t be an problem.

The package sets you back $69.99.

2 Comments

2 Comments

  1. Tim

    06/13/2010 at 11:33 am

    What someone has yet to answer for me is: What’s the point of one? How is having a small rectangular area where I set my device to charge $70 better than simply plugging it in? It’s not like the iPhone plug is a hard piece to connect/disconnect. On the current revision there aren’t even button to press in for a disconnect.

  2. M@rc

    06/13/2010 at 8:28 pm

    I liked the bigger powermat at some tech conference some time ago, at least you could charge multiple device at once and that was saving some cable mess, but this… I mean it’s useless.

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