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Wireless Charging A Boon For Sensorially Impaired - Techlab

Wireless Charging A Boon For The Sensorially Impaired - Scoop Techlab


A review by Emma Hart for Scoop Techlab

I expected the inductive charger for the Nokia Lumia 920 to make very little difference to my experience of using the phone. With normal use, the battery lasts long enough that I'm only ever charging it at night anyway, so it may as well be plugged in, right?

Unboxing the charger, I was oddly touched to discover Nokia have a sense of humour. The instruction booklet features a series of incredibly self-explanatory diagrams, followed by a large question-mark. Still confused? Open the book.

The charger pad has no contacts or points to line up; it's just a matter of casually putting your phone down on it, and it charges. Or near it: it doesn't actually have to be touching, so you can charge your phone through its case.

It took me a day to break my previous charging habits. The first time I picked the phone up off the charging pad, I went to pull the cord out of the bottom of it. Given there wasn't a cord, I ended up basically flinging my phone across the room. Phone drops: one. Phone swears: several.

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Now that I'm used to it, charging the phone is just like putting it down, and it's ridiculously handy. It's so nice not to have to fumble around trying to get the plug in, or the contacts lined up – especially in the dark or in other situations of sensory impairment.

Unlike with a corded charger, however, you can't use the phone while it's charging. As soon as you pick it up, it stops charging. And if you've run the battery down far enough that it's going to take a couple of hours to charge, that can be a pain. And I probably wouldn't bother taking the pad with me when I travel, and just stick with checking Twitter on the floor of the hotel bedroom with my phone plugged in to the only available power point.

I haven't run stop-watch tests or anything, but the inductive charger doesn't seem to be appreciably slower, certainly not enough to make any practical difference.

Over all, the inductive charger for the Nokia is not an essential. It is, though, a very nice to have.

Content Note: This post has been enabled by Telecom NZ , but the thoughts are the blogger's own. Find out more about the Nokia Lumia 920 here you can find our more about Windows 8 on the Telecom Network here. Scoop TechLab is a project of Scoop Independent Media www.scoop.co.nz. It is edited by Scoop Editor Alastair Thompson.

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