Meet Energysquare, a thin charging pad made so that you don’t have to plug in your phone charger ever again. Energysquare doesn’t rely on induction like most wireless chargers out there. Instead, Energysquare uses a conductive surface as well as a sticker on the back of your phone. The company is currently doing a Kickstarter campaign.
I met the team at Numa in Paris and saw a working prototype of Energysquare. The main device is a mousepad-size device with a grid of 25 metal squares. Metal squares are nice, but putting your phone on this pad doesn’t do much.
You’ll also have to put a sticker at the back of your phone. This sticker has two tiny metal dots at each end as well as a USB or Lightning connector so that you can plug the sticker to your phone. After that, you’re set.
While I’m not a fan of putting stickers on the back of your phone, I’m just tired of plugging and unplugging my phone multiple times a day. The idea behind Energysquare is that you have a charging pad at work and one at home so that you can just put your phone on the table to charge it.
Compared to inductive chargers, Energysquare can charge at full speed and you can put multiple devices on one pad. As long as the two ends of the stickers are on two different squares, your phone will start charging.
And the good thing is that stickers are quite inexpensive. You can get a bunch of them for $10. So you can replace your phone without having to think about this. An Energysquare charging pad costs $65 on Kickstarter (€59).
Eventually, the startup wants to be able to sell charging pads to train stations, airports and bars. This seems like a long shot, but it would certainly quite useful to have charging tables everywhere you go.
