Ikea furniture can now charge our phones. What a time to be alive.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that Ikea is basically a one-stop shop to furnish our entire lives. They have literally everything we need, and everything we don’t need but buy anyway. Now Ikea is taking the next step in running our lives by adding something truly miraculous to their inventory: furniture that wirelessly charges our devices. That literally means furniture (sans outlets, sans plugging in) that charges our gadgets. This is the future, you guys.
Wireless charging devices are not a new thing, but this will be the first time you can have them in household objects, like lamps, bureaus and your bed frame. The charging devices were designed by the Wireless Power Consortium and use a technology called Qi Wireless. They’re basically like little charging pads, and when your phone is within its wireless range, TAH-DAH, you’ve now got full battery life.
“Through research and home visits, we know that people hate cable mess,” Jeanette Skjelmose, a corporate manager at Ikea told the Wall Street Journal, “They worry about not finding the charger and running out of power. Our new innovative solutions, which integrates wireless charging into home furnishings, will make life at home simpler.” It’s true. Cords and wires are #thestruggle, especially if you have half a dozen things charging at the same time. Or you lose the charger and have no idea where to plug anything in. Or there is no outlet in a location where you desperately want an outlet to be. Sigh.
Importantly, this handy charging feature won’t even set you back an arm and a leg. It only costs about $30ish to have one of these charging pads included into your new desktop lamp! But there is a catch. At this time, the charging pads don’t work with all phones. They (right now) only work with Samsung Galaxy and Google Nexus 6 phones, along with a few others. That list doesn’t include the iPhone. So, your iPhone will not charge through this IKEA wireless magic.
That said, go ahead and cross your fingers that this iPhone add-on will be available by the time you need to buy a new coffee table. Actually the add-on will be available this spring, so I hope you’re ready for a new piece of furniture by then.
Image via here.
