[isfield]

I see what you're saying. We all want to improve technology here right. But I don't find it a great deal of effort to leave my phone on a charging mat when I go bed already. I think we're already at an efficient cost of effort over financial cost of an even more effortless technology already.

[svantana]

First off, I'm not saying I want this tech, I'm saying it would do well in the marketplace if it existed. Second, the 'effort' is not the physical act of plugging in, but rather the mental act of remembering to. Plus the potentially huge downside of running out of battery in a precarious situation.

[rickycook]

for me, it’s not about when i go to bed. that part’s easy already; it’s about when you’re at a friends house, or work, etc for longer than you expect and your battery starts to go flat. in this case, you think “i should have just charged my phone; i was next to a USB port all day”. it totally eliminates these situations once lightbulbs with charging become common place because you just show up and your phone starts charging without thinking about it

[mseebach]

It's very likely that the low-tech alternative just catches up way sooner than the (objectively better) high tech solution becomes viable.

The low tech in this case is that your friend probably has a compatible charger, and it's probably even already lying around so you can just plug in without even breaking conversation.

(There are a number of incompatible standards out there, but wireless charging would also be beset by competing standards)

[mnx]

Really there are only three standards I can think of - micro usb, covering probably 80%+ of devices, whatever the current becoming popular. That's way better than it used to be.

[stordoff]

I suspect ubiquitous charge pads will get us most of the way there a long time before any sort of long distance wireless (especially if e.g. the EU mandate a single charging standard as they did with micro USB). If they are everywhere, it's relatively easy to remember to put your device there, and forgetting to do so doesn't matter most of the time if/when you can get a meaningful amount of charge in just a few minutes.