Wireless printing; the next big thing

Keywords: Trends, future technology, gadgets, gizmo's, wireless printing, wireless power, remote printing, Qi wireless charging, wireless powered devices, wireless powered TV, wireless powered household devices, smart devices, Nokia, Samsung, HP Hewlett Packard, Apple

Now we are in the beginning stage of the world of wireless powered devices with the latest releases of Nokia and Samsung smartphones, it's time to gaze ahead to more future gadgets and gizmo's. Although the new technology of wireless charging  is still very immature and limited in range and actual power delivery, Qi (the name of this new wireless charging technology) is moving forward very quickly and we will very soon see devices using it which require much more power then a small mobile phone of tablet.

One of the devices expected to be using wireless power supply within the next five years are printers. Hewlett Packard is already experimenting with wireless power supply in their Research & Development labs and I'm very sure Samsung will certainly come out with a compact wireless printer not sooner then 2020. We are also expecting the other revolutionary printing device, the 3D-printer to be equipped with wireless power supply before the next decade.

Now what is Qi (and soon Qi 2.0) all about and what are its current- and future capabilities? Qi is a technique that allows devices to be charged and powered by a wireless stream of electric current. A Qi powerstation is connected to the power grid and "beams" it to one or more nearby devices. At the moment the distance and amount of electric current is still very limited but progress is being made in the development of this new technique quite fast. It is expected by experts that before the year 2020 we will be able to reach a transmission distance of about two to four meters. That is a very promising thought as that will aloow us to have wireless powerstations in all sorts of public places such as restaurants, shopping malls, or even when I gaze a bit further embedded in public roads and highways, enbling electric cars to automatically being charged while driving.

Together with TV's, printers (on small ppersonal usage scale or more demanding business use) will be one of the first non-communication devices to be fitted with wireless power supply. This is because the bridge from smart devices to printers is small, a number of manufacturers of smart-devices are also manufacturing printers and to incorporate Qi into printers is in relation to other things not very difficult.

The next thing we will most probably see is manufacturers like Samsung and Apple to develop wireless powered smart household devices, and eventually the transition will become complete when all electric devices we use in our daily lives will no longer have cables stuck into a wall-socket.

Read more about Qi on the Future Blog & Tech News
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