Xiaomi says its ‘Air Charge’ tech works for several meters

Xiaomi has announced “Mi Air Charge Technology”, a wireless charging system that the company claims is capable of charging devices “within a range of several meters”. Multiple devices can be charged at 5W at the same time, according to Xiaomi, and physical obstacles apparently do not reduce the efficiency of charging.

Xiaomi says the technology will also work with smartwatches and fitness bracelets. Another goal is to make “living rooms truly wireless,” with speakers, lights and smart home devices all powered by the same remote system. Xiaomi representative confirms The edge, however, that no commercial product will include the technology this year, and declined to provide a release deadline.

Here’s how Mi Air Charge technology works, in Xiaomi’s words:

Xiaomi’s basic remote charging technology is spatial positioning and energy transmission. The isolated charging battery developed by Xiaomi has five built-in phase interference antennas, which can accurately detect the location of the smartphone. A phase control network composed of 144 antennas transmits millimeter waves directly to the telephone by beamforming.

On the smartphone side, Xiaomi has also developed a miniaturized antenna array with integrated “beacon antenna” and “receiving antenna array”. The beacon antenna broadcasts position information with low power consumption. The receiving antenna array consisting of 14 antennas converts the millimeter wave signal emitted by the charging stack into electrical energy through the rectifier circuit, to turn the sci-fi charging experience into reality.

Needless to say, you have to be skeptical about the prospects for commercializing this technology until evidence suggests otherwise. Companies like Energous have been making “true wireless charging” announcements at CES and beyond for several years, but the technology has yet to gain traction. However, Xiaomi has demonstrated breakthroughs in wireless charging engineering in the past and has the advantage of having a huge hardware ecosystem that it could theoretically tap into.