Wireless Power Group Sees Standard Within 6 Months 152
alphadogg writes "The group developing a standard for wireless charging expects to complete its first specification within six months, opening the door for makers of cell phones, digital cameras and other devices to bring compatible products to market. Wireless charging lets consumers place gadgets on a mat that plugs into a wall outlet, and have the devices recharge automatically without needing to plug in each one. Apart from the gee-whiz factor, it's supposed to make life more convenient by letting people walk into their home or office, toss their gadgets onto a mat to recharge and forget about them."
Saving power (Score:3, Interesting)
Charging mats will recognize when a device is fully charged and then consume a trickle of energy in standby mode
Okay thats interesting. We all use wireless (inductive) power in other places and while, yeah, the cheap plugpack segment is mostly switchmode now I wonder if there are places where the efficency of transformers could be improved with a digital back channel which says send me this much power.
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while, yeah, the cheap plugpack segment is mostly switchmode now I wonder if there are places where the efficency of transformers could be improved
How about they improve the power supplies first? It's bad enough that there are all these cheap crappy switch-mode power supplies splattering harmonics of their switching frequency up and down the RF spectrum, but now they want to design them to radiate *more*?
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Charging mats will recognize when a device is fully charged and then consume a trickle of energy in standby mode
Okay thats interesting. We all use wireless (inductive) power in other places and while, yeah, the cheap plugpack segment is mostly switchmode now I wonder if there are places where the efficency of transformers could be improved with a digital back channel which says send me this much power.
Isn't that how transformers work - the power consumed is directly proportional to the power provided? It seems to me that a wireless system would be like a transformer, except with an air gap instead of a soft iron core.
Correction (Score:2)
Great, another place where my phone can be stolen.
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Its just where you normally charge the phone, except you don't have to plug it in.
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Number of times phone stolen from bedside table: 0
Number of times phone stolen from office desk: 0
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And what's the number of times your phone has been stolen at all ?
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Times cell phone has been stolen at all: 0
Seriously, it lives in your pocket, or on your belt. How many times have you had your wallet stolen? Maybe you have an issue with keeping track of your personal belongings. I've never heard of any of my friends (mostly BB and iPhone users, fairly desirable phones, unlockable and use SIM cards) with stolen phones. Usually it's death by toilet, sidewalk or frustration (wall).
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And yes, I do think that if public charging stations become popular (it really doesn't seem that far fetched to me) then phones will be a bit more susceptible to theft.
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Great, another place where my phone can be stolen.
I don't see how putting it on a charge mat on your desk is any worse from a theft point of view than putting it on your desk and plugging in a charge cable.
Not going to happen... (Score:5, Insightful)
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-cough- USB -cough-
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Apple uses cables that happen to have a USB plug on one side.
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Yeah different physical interfaces but that can't be an issue in this case.
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-cough- you can say as much as you want between two coughs - they could have even occurred minutes or hours apart -cough-
Re:Not going to happen... (Score:4, Informative)
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No problem! We'll just have an adaptor/receiver that you plug into your old adaptor. This will receive wireless power, convert it back to 120/240V AC, then power your old wired adaptor.
You can't plug something into a wireless power source, it's wireless.
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Strange limitation (Score:4, Informative)
The article mentions "The standard is for delivering up to 5 watts of power, which covers most smaller devices. "
This sounds like a pretty low limit to me. My iPhone charger delivers 5 watts and it takes hours before it's charged. Now imagine you buy one of those matts and your family or colleagues throw their phones on the matt as well. At the end of the day, they might not even be charged!
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If you just keep the phone on the mat it will rarely take hours to charge.
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How so? Is 5 watts through the mat somehow more than 5 watts through a cable?
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Because it will charge whenever you put it down, as opposed to whenever you plug it in.
A Modest Proposal (Score:1, Funny)
That sounds awfully inconvenient if you're trying to take a call. Perhaps instead of having one large mat that all the phones have to lie on top of, you could split it up into smaller inductors, put a layer of velco on each, and wire them to extend up to 3 feet from the central hub. Your cell, of course, would have a corresponding velcro patch, and if you needed to make a call, you just pick it up and call, without having to worry about running out of power on a quarter-charge.
I think we could call it a "te
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The article mentions "The standard is for delivering up to 5 watts of power, which covers most smaller devices. "
This sounds like a pretty low limit to me. My iPhone charger delivers 5 watts and it takes hours before it's charged. Now imagine you buy one of those matts and your family or colleagues throw their phones on the matt as well. At the end of the day, they might not even be charged!
I'm not sure how you missed this sentence, but this makes it pretty clear to me.
Initial products are likely to come bundled with a small charging mat of their own, but if the technology takes off other companies are likely to sell mats that can charge multiple devices at once.
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The trouble is that these devices use exactly the same principles as radio transmitters do - if you increase the power then you start screwing up radio broadcasts at whatever frequency it is you are using to transmit the power - not good.
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My iPhone charger delivers 5 watts and it takes hours before it's charged.
While the charger may be rated at 5 watts output, the phone battery isn't charging at a full 5 watts if its taking hours. The battery in the iPhone is rated at 5.7 watt-hours (3.7 volts, 1500 mAH). Even if we estimate the charging process at only 75% efficient, that should charge it from zero to full in 1.5 hours. Here is a picture of a replacement Apple 3G battery showing the specs. http://cdn.overstock.com/images/products/28/688/L12455938.jpg [overstock.com]
Still, I agree that 5-watts is a little low for some devices.
USB standards (Score:2)
I know this is a late response, but I didn't see it in the children comments:
USB is capable of delivering 5V at 1A, or 5W of power, per port in its maximum configuration. This is likely where the spec came from, since most manufacturers are moving towards the mini-usb as a power source. By providing the current standard limit, most device designs will already conform downstream of the induction coil. They've simply designed to the marketplace.
What they didn't necessarily consider is that it would be great i
Pointless (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't really see the point. As long as you have to put the device in a specific location anyway, I don't see that it's much of an improvement over having to connect it with your charger. You have to connect it with a location just the same, with this new tech, just the plug is different (a pad vs a plug).
Wake me when you have a tech that charges my mobile from the moment I step in my home door and leave my mobile in my jacket pocket hanging in the foyer.
Until that use case can be satisfied, I think this is just the same-old, same-old.
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My wife and I tend to drop our phones in standard places in the house, then plug them in at night. This way the phones will charge when they are put down.
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Have you seriously gotten so lazy that you can't even SET SOMETHING DOWN?
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It's not about laziness. If it was about laziness, I'd jump on the new tech because it saves me the "arduous" step of *plugging in* (gasp). Instead I'm planning on staying with the far more demanding step of actually plugging in.
It's about forgetfulness. As I grow older and more senile, I plain and simple don't *remember* to put my devices at their designated charging locations every single night. If there was a tech that charged my devices no matter where I left them inside the confines of my house, that w
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Encouraging you to put your phone in the same place every night is a feature, especially for you if you are forgetful. If you could leave your phone anywhere in your house to charge, what are the odds of you remembering where you put it?
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First place to look is the refrigerator. Probably find his glasses and dentures there, too.
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Re:Pointless (Score:5, Informative)
as someone who builds (diy) and also fixes commercial gear, let me splain one thing to you.
the jacks are pure shit and they fail in very short times if they see any use at all. most plugs have minimal strain relief and there is NONE at the socket side of things.
if you go socketless, you have one less thing on the (mp3, phone, etc) to break on its main board.
of course, you still have the line-out (etc) to worry about breaking, but repeated chargings on cheap connectors (they ALl are cheap chinese connectors) isn't ever a good thing. removing them is a good thing.
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It's been a long time since the last time I've had a broken jack on an electronic device. It's fine if other people want this wireless standard. However, if it means slower data transfer, likely slower charging, adding a bit of weight and thickness, at a higher cost, only to make it slightly more reliable, I'll be a late adopter on this particular idea.
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The plug is absent, saving you the 'plug in' step that comes before the 'place on surface' step.
Free recharge :D (Score:2)
If something like that will happen, I can imagine neighborhood teenagers suspiciously lounging about near your place. Because their newest cell phones will be recharged for free :)
Of course you can lock down "over the air" emissions by shielding that room... but it means your cell, while charging, won't be able to receive/place calls. Which would require a femtocell inside that charging room, which makes it all even more expensive.
So... please pull your gadgets out of the pocket and put them on the mat for
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It only works with direct contact, like 1mm away. No further than that.
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They were talking about the GP's "leave it to charge anywhere in the house." In that case, you *would* have the potential for people to leech power from outside.
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If it prevents you from putting certain other things in that spot, it may very well be even worse than a charger plug.
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I don't really see the point. As long as you have to put the device in a specific location anyway, I don't see that it's much of an improvement over having to connect it with your charger. You have to connect it with a location just the same, with this new tech, just the plug is different (a pad vs a plug).
Wake me when you have a tech that charges my mobile from the moment I step in my home door and leave my mobile in my jacket pocket hanging in the foyer.
Until that use case can be satisfied, I think this is just the same-old, same-old.
A couple things...
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I don't really see the point.
Instead of twelve wires leading to twelve plugs going to a powerstrip or two before reaching the wall for a dozen devices, you have one wire going to the wall and the devices on a flat surface which may if you like be cluttered with other non-charging devices. Or you build it into your countertop or other piece of furniture so you don't even see that wire.
No, the real problem is that these devices needing charging are mobile, and continue to be mobile when used in the home. People want to keep their iPods w
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Beyond phones and cameras, a good use will be for kitchen appliances like toasters, kettles, sandwich makers, blenders, etc that are powered by the benchtops. For phones and cameras, it'd just be hype - most people would charge their phone over night once every few days, surely?
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This is better than having a million different plugs/adaptors/dongles.
I'd love to see a car outfitted with a special version of this, too.
Hotel rooms can have one, on the night stand, as a nice feature for their guests.
Any office desk could definitely benefit from one. Less wiring clutter. Only downside is no USB sync (yet).
There are plenty of uses. They're all moot unless there is an industry-wide standard, though.
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My wife and I have several devices (phones, MP3 players, etc) that we charge in one location and the rats nest of wires and connectors is a nightmare. Personally, I find the idea of dropping my device
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This is how it should be:
Two batteries, one in use, one always either charging or charged.
Batteries are easily swapped.
The devices have a small built-in battery or capacitor allowing for 30 seconds of idle operation without battery so reboot isn't necessary during battery swap.
The charger has many pins to accomodate a wide variety of batteries, and can auto-sense battery type and pin polarity (unless the battery has abslutely no charge, rare).
Battery chargers are easier and cheaper than robust mini power
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B b b b ut plugging it in is too hard!
Rugged, more sturdy devices (Score:2)
It will be much easier to make a device more rugged (also mobile phones looking otherwise quite stylish; check Nokia 3720 classic) if it doesn't need to have any plugs.
This for power, Bluetooth/etc. for connectivity.
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To me a big plus is the pad could be integrated into furniture to produce an invisible charger. If a desk sized charger mat could be retrofitted or simply stuck to the underside of an existing desk it would be convenient. You just lay the device on the desk and go about your business. It also cuts the need for having multiple chargers. My night stand has a charger for my phone and Ipod and they sometimes find their way to the floor behind the table. A single wire connected to a pad or mat that doesn't fall
How hard is it, really? (Score:2)
I mean, seriously, how hard is it to come up with a standard for this?
I'll take a stab:
5 Ghz, keep power below the FCC limit for uncontrolled emission at at (1 meter or less).
Was that so hard, really?
And when I'm somewhere else? (Score:2, Interesting)
And how do I charge it when I'm somewhere else?
Oh. Use a plug-in charger? Um... So, what's the point here?
How about standardizing on a USB charging interface?
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Are you seriously railing against redundancy?
Besides, if it's a small, flexible mat, you can take it with you just as easily as a USB-ended charging adaptor. Maybe more easily, if it doesn't require some form of brick.
Re:And when I'm somewhere else? (Score:4, Informative)
How about standardizing on a USB charging interface?
I thought we already had [wikipedia.org]
Which USB? (Score:2)
Sure to be a hit (Score:3, Insightful)
How efficient is this? (Score:2)
Back in the late 50s, I ran a several turn loop around my bedroom and created a "Halo coil" with many turns on a set of monaural headphones so I could have cordless headphones for listening to my shortwave radio. It worked, but wasn't particularly efficient.
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Underwater photography (charging a sealed camera) (Score:4, Interesting)
This will be a huge boon to me.. One of my hobbies is underwater photography, and as anyone who does that will testify, you always have a nervous moment when you immerse the camera and housing at the start of a dive..
This is because you have to seal the camera in a housing, sealed by a multitude of o-rings, each of which need to be cleaned and re-greased every time you open the housing. When you put the o-rings back in place, you have to look carefully for a hair, or a speck of grit or dirt, or anything that could compromise the seal in any way. If you mess up (even a single hair can cause a seal failure), you'll have a lovely view of rising water in your camera housing, and you camera will be so much junk (and you may kill the electronics in the housing too, which is expensive as well!)..
This can really put a crimp in a holiday (no more photography for you! And you did have it insured, didn't you??)..
There are really only two common reasons to crack a housing open.. To take the memory card out and back it up, and to recharge the camera/strobe batteries after a dive..
As you need to recharge after most dives, nobody's really bothered much with wireless data transmission, but if you can wirelessly recharge, it's simple to add wireless data transfer too, so you'll not have to crack the case 'till you want to change the lens (which isn't too common most of the time) or strip it for cleaning (you could probably get away with once or twice a holiday, if that).. Much safer!
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And for us slightly less serious underwater photographers, I can imagine a nice little point-and-shoot cast in a solid block of polycarbonate. No gaskets at all-- no leaks until crush depth and catastrophic failure.
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High end cameras (the kind you'd be really worried about) generally have separate battery packs that recharge on a conditioning charger. They don't charge in-camera because no professional in their right mind is going to dock their camera for any length of time - they swap and go. There are options for studio photogs that will continuously power the cameras, but studio and underwater really aren't overlapping.
Interestingly, the housings already cost as much as (or more than) the camera itself. I just pick
curious... (Score:2, Interesting)
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The article implies a data channel from the device to the charger so the charger knows when not to deliver power.
Fear of power lines... (Score:3, Interesting)
If the public is already afraid of living near power lines (100yds away), what makes these manufacturers think that having a bunch of 'wireless power pads' is going to be any different? Or is this a case of a rabid chihuahua is no threat due to its size?
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could've happened sooner (Score:2)
... but every time they call each other, the calls go straight to voice mail, as if the phones are never turned on. weird.
energy loss (Score:3, Interesting)
the fact that this process inevitably will cost more energy than plugging the device is seems unimportant...
This should be BANNED! (Score:5, Insightful)
OK does any one else see this as completely nuts?
At the moment the power output is relatively low. 5 watts ish. Lets think about this. This is BROADCAST POWER. It's going to leak into everything around it. There will be no such thing as 95% efficient transfer of power. So where does this residual power go. Well into everything around it. The closer something is the more it will receive.
Very simple chemistry here. Entropy increase with energy. Entropy can simple be defined as the desire of a substance to reach it most random and natural state. ( There is probably a more accurate definition than that. ) AKA Entropy is all about things BREAKING DOWN. So if we add energy to a "thing" it ultimately will break down faster.
I'm sorry but I don't want to be walking around in yet more energy radiation fields. Especially one designed to transmit POWER AKA ENERGY.
5 watts gives way to 10 watts gives away to 25 watts gives away to stupid amounts of power. As "improvements" and legislation allow higher and higher output.
This also strikes me as the most un-green tech out there. Simply a device that radiates POWER.
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Minor detail, AFAIK it's physics. In the main, however, you do voice my own doubts as well.
I have yet to come across ANY wireless transmission method that didn't incorporate a degree of loss.
I would have been FAR more interested in getting at last a Really Universal Power Supply (let's call it a RUPS) that could feed everything I jacked into it. My problem isn't plugging in, my problem is the vast plethora of chargers required to keep all this stuff going, which has partially driven my preference for anyt
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Your comments make it sound like a conductor like copper leaks like a device made to radiate watts. Far from the truth, power companies try as hard as they ca to distribute power with minimal radial loss. Why? it saves money.
This tech on the other hand is quite the opposite. It makes more money the better it can "radiate" power to a device.
So drawing a parallel is not appropriate as they have opposite goals in design.
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Re:opportunities (Score:4, Informative)
You could put the baby beside a phone or camera which requests power, but even then its only five watts which is not going to do any damage.
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Yeah but that ignores inductive coupling. I suppose there might be warnings for people with pacemakers around these things but they already get exposed to that much power from AC fields around big transformers, etc.
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Right, because everybody I know spends all day in an electricity substation.
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30V through skin, 5V or probably even less otherwise. There was a moron (AFAIR, a soldier in training) who killed himself using a 9V battery-powered ohmmeter by sticking the pointed probes into his thumbs, through the skin. You see, blood is an electrolyte, it conducts electricity quite nicely, and the shortest path from one hand to the other using blood as a conductor is through the heart...
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This is an urban legend, btw. Usually it's a Navy sailor in the tale.
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I wouldn't put it past us Navy folk. A guy in my A School class tried to megger between his nipples.
A megger does have much more voltage than a simple ohmmeter. Most units I've seen had pretty low currents, but you could still give yourself a nice shock.
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Re:opportunities (Score:4, Funny)
You could put the baby beside a phone or camera
No damage to the baby, but that phone/camera is toast as soon as you turn your head :)
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LOL, and true.
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Do babies come with Induction coils?
Quote TFA:
"The standard is for a technology called magnetic induction, in which power is transferred between metal coils built into the device and the charging mat when they are placed close to each other. "
Its just a magnetic field folks.
Re:opportunities (Score:4, Insightful)
Do babies come with Induction coils?
A few [wikipedia.org].
A guy I worked with his son had broken the antenna on his implant in the playground at school. They could get it working by squeezing his head in just the right way to close the break in the antenna wire.
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The same kind of magnetic field that is also generated by power lines, and would be the cause of any problems associated with them, assuming said problems exist.
Static magnetic fields are fine (the earth has one naturally), but changing ones could be dangerous due to the induction, which is the exact reason they're being used here (to induce a current).
There's been some research [wikipedia.org] done on power lines, although I couldn't really say whether or not the fields from a wireless charging device. On one hand you ha
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Consumers will know which products are compliant because they'll carry the consortium's "Qi" logo (pronounced "chee" after the Chinese for life force).
Or maybe it'll be the char (U+6C7D) pronounced "qi4", meaning "vapor, gas, steam". ;-)
One online dictionary has 106 Chinese characters pronounced "qi" in Mandarin, with all of the possible tones. Their logo is just a stylized form of the two letters "qi", it could mean any of them. So we could make a lot of jokes about the true meaning of their use of this
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The character for "vapor, gas, steam" is the character they are referring to. The life force used in traditional Chinese medicine is another meaning for that same character.
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Hmmm ... I'd think that most techies would immediately think "vaporware".
In English, this doesn't work too well as a metaphor for "life force" (whatever that may be). We get our life force by ingesting "lesser" life forms that supply us with the carbohydrates, amino acids, plus the trace minerals and vitamins that we need to maintain our vitality. We do need oxygen, but we don't usually call it "vapor".
Maybe they really meant the logo to refer to vaporware. Ya think?
Actually, I was assuming they meant th
Shi-Shi (Score:2)
And Mandarin has so many homonyms to have fun with, especially if you drop the tones ...
Just ask CHAO Yuen Ren [wikipedia.org].
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Why do they have to keep using 2 letter acronyms for everything?
How about you learn what an acronym is. First and foremost it is an abbreviation. If you can't expand it, it's not an abbreviation, and thus not a pronounceable abbreviation: it's just a short trademark.
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Its an option for the palm pre as well.
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Think about the power needed to keep mobile phones loaded with applications working though the day. It would be okay if you could be stuffed plugging it into USB whenever you sat down but thats too hard. But if you can drop it on to a charging pad [phones4uaccessories.com] from time to time the battery need never go down.
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Somebody else pointed out in this article that you don't want to overuse the connectors on phones because they do eventually break. I charge my phone once a day for this reason. Thats all it is.