So, today was pretty cool, right? Of course it was, Google aren’t going to let the weather slow them down when it comes to their day in the sun. The search giant has a history of bringing of what’s at the forefront of tech to their Nexus line and this time around there were no exceptions. With the new Nexus 4, they’ve certainly brought some interesting technology to the market. To have a pure Android device packing 2GB of RAM and the latest and greatest quad-core CPU is pretty great. This isn’t all though, as Google have seen fit to bring Wireless Charging to the new device.
While wireless charging has been somewhat of a novelty, it’s something a lot of people admired from the Palm line of phones and HP’s TouchPad as well. LG’s first Nexus will have an accompanying charging dock that looks like a Nexus Q cut in half with a Nexus logo on it. The phone is then attached to this device using a magnetic coil, charging the phone and keeping it firmly in place. This is, of course, pretty much a docking station that you can go ahead and buy for any device out there. However, as someone that has a Touchstone charger for my TouchPad I can tell you that this alone, is a far easier solution to quickly get your devices charged up and ready to go – just drop it on and forget about, you only have to worry about one cable going from the mains to the charging dock and that’s it. The strong magnet makes sure that you have to be really stupid to not put it on right and it keeps the phone at a nice angle, making it easy to use Google’s voice technology to reply to texts whilst charging.
The question is why have Google gone with the technology now? I think that Google are waking up to the fact that those of us using smartphones have these devices become a part of our lives. These phones that we carry around with us do everything for us and whilst that might sound a little strange, with Google Now we really can do everything with them. Having a charging dock that is as easy to use as this makes the whole experience a little smoother and I’d have to say makes the device fit into our daily routines a lot easier.
Also, why not go with something like the Powermats in Starbucks? I think that a lot of it comes down to the fact that LG will more than likely getting into the wireless charging game and if the technology first hits a Nexus device then Android fans could perhaps look to LG in the future for the same technology. I wonder if this is something Mattias Duarte himself had pushed for, as it’s something that was shipped with Palm devices of old and it was certainly a popular technology. It’s clear that Google are particular about who they partner with and perhaps a partnership with Powermat was something they didn’t want to go down but as well as this I doubt that LG would be happy if they went elsewhere for Wireless charging. At the end of it all though, should we really care that much? We still get another cool gadget for our desks or nightstands.