Duracell MyGrid cable-free gadget charger

Cable-free charging is nothing new, the notion having been pioneered by Powermat, but the big names in consumer power have now taken note of the technology and have introduced their big-brand alternatives. Duracell MyGrid Charge Pad Duracell's MyGrid Charge Pad: handy if you've several devices you need to charge at once …

[It wasnt me]

My word.....

What are they thinking?. 90 quid to replace the charger that came free with my phone? I dont suppose they'll sell many.

Cons:

Got to use a minging case

Got to take it off to sync

Got to stick some hideous metal disc on the back

Energy efficiency

Empty wallet

Pros:

Might save one wall socket if I charge 2 devices. That will cost another 20 quid though.

Will have spare charger for putting under a realy, really short table leg

Will finally have something to occupy that bit of spare space on the sideboard.

Er......

Seriously, Id be surprised if they sell any. Their customer list will be a veritable whos-who of utter morons.

If wall sockets really are an issue, there are plenty of better ways to address your problems without parting company with 110 quid. Give me £50 and ill give you a 79p solution.

[Neil Milner-Harris]

Spot On

I'm grateful to you for confirming to me that I'm not the only person that really doesn't see the point of these devices.

These devices are a solution looking for a problem, really what is so difficult or complicated about plugging a phone in to the correct charger?

Plus its easier to carry a charger around than all of this kit.

Seriously when I got my latest Blackberry it cost less than £30 to get a second charger for the office, 2 car chargers and a cradle dock for it so I will be happily able to charge my phone anywhere I am likely to be on a regular basis.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are far from the only one...

Not only can is this expensive, less efficient, ugly as hell and less portable, it is less useful as an actual charger... at least with my wall charger in I can still use my damn phone within cable distance of a plug, with something like this I have to put it down and leave it until it has enough charge to be useful again... what a total waste of R&D.

Come back to us when it is TRUE wireless power, i.e it charges my device when placed anywhere within the same room, or at least within 6ft ish of the charger AND is as efficient as using a cable. Seriously when we are supposed to be eco friendly stupid products like this Duracell thing should be forgotten at the 1st meeting.

The most epic of fails, epic on the scale of taking all the epic-ness from every Hollywood historical epic film (Spartacus et al.) and adding a few orders of magnitude then inverting it into fail-epic and applying it to product design.

[DT]

Solution?

Agree with your post entirely...however I wasn't aware that charging devices with a regular dock was a problem in the first place!

[Jimmy Floyd]

@It wasnt me

You've got it spot on there. This kind of technology is pretty pointless when you still have to carry your phone around with a connector always in place (which you'll then have to remove if you want to connect it to a computer).

This is a solution looking for a problem that doesn't exist.

Now, if the phone manufacturers could agree on a standard to include this sort of things WITHIN the phone itself.....

[Velv]

Agree, but.....

Totally agree with the sentiments here - why would you pay £xxx for any extra charger and need to use a special case (that looks terrible and adds bulk).

But let's move on (and back slightly) - last year the phone makers (except Apple) approved the adoption of a single connector for charging. A great move forward that solves the multiple charger single socket problem and saves the planet.

Now all we need is for all the manufacturers to build wireless charging into the device and these mats suddenly look very useful indeed.

OK, so we're a long way off, and there are still drawbacks and costs, but in 5-10 years time this will be the norm. You're next kitchen will probably come with a charging pad "bay" as an option.

[Fuzz]

You'd definitely have to mental to buy one.

This is especially true given that all non Apple phones now have the same micro USB port so they all share chargers. This means you can have one on your desk at work, one by the bed, one by the TV and they will fit all your phones. Very few people need to charge more than one phone at the same time, they generally run low on charge at different times.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bargain!

Brilliant! £70 to charge my batteries you say? That's way better than the standard charger that comes with the phone!

Suppose it's ok if you dexterity issues and find chargers to fiddly to plug in. Apart from that I can't see why anyone would want to drop 70 notes on this when it could be better invested in a hooker for the evening.

[Anonymous Coward]

Have they not checked?

There is an international project and a research group named MyGrid already.. founded around year 2000.

Do the people who name products ever check ...

Or are their brains sadly Dura-but-Single-Cell?

[Cameron Colley]

Still pointless.

A "triple adaptor" plug socket is much, much cheaper and will allow you to charge three devices simultaneously using the adaptors you already have -- so no stupid stick-on "adaptor".

Since most, if not all, new smart-phones will be chargeable using a micro USB charger you should soon be able to use the adaptor for any phone to charge any other -- so even in a family or office situation this just won't be needed.

As has been mentioned before in comments -- inductive charging is only a good thing for sealed devices such as toothbrushes.

Still, I suspect that the manufacturers will manage to con enough people into buying things like this that in a few years you'll have to buy an inductive charge phone, for more money than it would hvea cost if it weren't, whether you like it or not.

[Matt Hawkins]

Waste of money

So this cable-free system still requires you to plug something into your phone? In some cases a large lump of plastic that I presume you have to lug around with you just to save the 2 seconds it takes to charge in the old fashion way.

Why wouldn't I just save £90 and plug, for the sake of argument, a phone charger into my phone?

With new phones/devices using micro-USB you are going to be spoilt for choice for normal charging points in any house/office within 12 months.

On Dragons Den this product would get chewed and spat out. It identifies a problem and fails to solve it without much change from £100 vs £5 for a normal charger.

[Semaj]

a

Until this tech starts appearing by default in lots of different devices (in a standard way) all these things will flop.

As "It wasn't me" said. You'd have to be an idiot to spend about £100 on a gizmo that does a worse job than the cable you got for free.

[Lottie]

Looks to me

like a me too! device that wasn't thought through properly. If you can take the clip off and have to put it on to charge it, how does that make it any simpler than finding the charger cable? I can imagine running round trying to find the clip because it got knoked somewhere dhen the dog ran through the room or something equally stupid.

Lame and poorly executed bandwagon jumper it seems.

[davefb]

fool and his money?

So,

I get the charger for the house . Then what do I do for work when I want to make sure my smartphone is fully charged? I mean obviously I just let it charge through the usb port.

Oh hang on, I can do that at home as well?

I really really don't understand why these devices exist . Yes it's insane that chargers don't have a standard, but fix that rather than come up with wierd non-solutions. Lets face it , more and more devices have usb connectors which they can charge through ( though not all depressingly).

In fact, does this charge anything other than devices that take the various usb connectors(+nokia but which nokia?) ?

90 quid device, replacable by a 1 quid wire.... err you know, I'll pass :)

( and I bet the wire is more energy efficient!)

[AndrueC]

What the engineer giveth

..the other engineer taketh.

No sooner have one set of mobile device engineers got their head around switched mode PSUs to alleviate energy vampirism when along comes another lot trying to roll out wireless electricity transmission.

On the plus side the EU has at least mandated that charging by USB has to be mandatory on all new phones. Just a shame they couldn't all agree on a standard connector.

[Mage]

No

The mat uses a cable, it needs a wall socket, doesn't run on pixie dust.. This is a gimmick.

[JDX]

To quote the dragons...

They're solving a problem that doesn't exist. Unless phones all have this ability built in, and many places have compatible chargers, like hotels, what's the point? It takes me 1s to plug my phone into a charger and I can pick it up and use it while charging.

[Anonymous Coward]

the point?

Surely if you're going to have to attach a special case to the device why don't they just design the case with 2 terminals on the back and corresponding terminals on some form of dock which you just drop the device onto? Like a normal cordless phone.

I have some rechargeable LED lights which do just this - each one has a terminal on the bottom (a ring with a single point in the centre) which line up with the points on their base unit. And they only cost a tenner...

[Anonymous Coward]

The EASY

solution, is a standard power connector.

Standard for phones, standard for consumer 'tronics (cam corders etc) would make life much much simpler. Also, one device would charge a multitude of others..

Obvious solution....

Brains because, well, it took none...

[Jim Peters 1]

Not inductive charging

I don't know if anyone else has noticed, but it has four contacts, and they seem to touch the bars on the charger. I'd guess that they are alternately +/- and the contacts have a bunch of diodes to sort out +/- so no induction is necessary.

[Steve John]

Pointless

Given that you have to put the devices *on* the mat & encase your gadget with something that increases its bulk, I really don't see the point in these. I just got one of those iDapt things you guys reviewed recently, and I think it's great. Tidied away all our chargers and just use the iDapt - don't have to put a stupid case around the gadget either.

[Kevin McMurtrie]

And pigs fry

Are those bare electrified metal strips on the surface? The important question now is AC or DC. AC could do a nice job of heating a piece of cured ham but DC would make a big rusty mess. The review needs to be updated, as being able to heat salty slabs of meat could possibly make the device useful.

[Steven Jones]

What I'd really like to see...

So a product only of use to those to lazy to plug a connector into the bottom of a phone?

I also see a problem. There surely can't be many people who haven't quickly had to locate their charger as they are warned of a low battery level during a call in order to continue it. It's not going to be very easy to do that with a device like this one.

I'd echo all those that just want a standard connector. In fact I'd go further - I'd like a general purpose multi-outlet DC "brick" whith a single connector type that can negotiate with the devices it's powering. That way I could replace a dozen or more DC adapters with one or two. I could have a single device for powering a laptop, a router, charge a phone, the camcorder, a USB drive, battery charger, printer, speakers...

[Luke McCarthy]

Better idea: wirelessly rechargeable AA batteries

Would make recharging wiimotes less of a hassle.

[Mark Serlin]

Some genius idea

I saw recently someone came up with the idea of a USB socket in a power outlet plate, underneath the regular plug socket. Now that's genius - just plug your phone's USB straight in!