Coffee shops are more than just about drinking coffee nowadays. It’s a place to talk and hang-out with friends, read a book on your own, and yes, to kill time while charging your gadgets. That will get even easier as Starbucks announced a national roll-out at their stores the ability to wirelessly charge their phones through the technology of Duracell Powermats, making the race to find a wall socket in the store a thing of the past.
They already pilot tested the Powermats at several stores, and Adam Brotman, chief digital officer at Starbucks, said they were “pleased” with how customers responded and now they will be rolling it out to all company-operated stores in the US as well as Teavana Fine Teas + Tea Bars later on. They will be starting in the San Francisco Bay area and targetting to finish equipping all the stores by 2015. There will be certain areas in the stores where customers will just need to place their devices on the Powermats and voila, wireless charging at its simplest.
However, only devices that are compatible with the Powermat at this point can charge wirelessly. But fear not, as Powermat Technologies continues to grow, the number of compatible devices is also growing. Currently, the Powermat Spots have already complied with the standards set by the organisation Power Matters Alliance, which includes AT&T, Blackberry, HTC, Huawei, LG, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Samsung, TI and ZTE .
With Starbucks adding WiFi and integrating their Starbucks Digital Network for mobile payments and even digital music downloads, people are starting to hang out again in the coffee shops, with most of them using their gadgets. This latest innovation of wireless charging will sure come in handy for all the customers whose devices are drained by the constant use of their WiFi.
SOURCE: Starbucks
Is Powermat different technology then Qi?
Yes. They are currently not compatible. I think Broadcom just invented a chipset that will accept either standard.
Thats what i am curious about and i think until now all have been Qi and it will take some time till market switches to powermat, right?
Who uses powermat? I know a few people that use QI. None use Powermat. Unless this is a Iphone 6 leak. There was one rumor that mentioned wireless charging for the next generation iPhone.