Review: Powermat for iPhone

review by Bill Palmer

If you hear “charge your iPhone wirelessly” and you imagine your iPhone being able to magically juice itself up while still in your pocket simply by being in proximity to the charger, then you’ll have to wait until the next big technological breakthrough. But wireless iPhone charging does actually exist here in 2009, in the form of a plastic case that you keep your iPhone in all day and then toss onto an electrical mat when you get home. The iPhone then charges up via the panel on the back of the case, and while it does require persistent physical contact, there’s no plugging or unplugging of cables involved – nor do you ever have to remove your iPhone from its case. And while more than one vendor has brought such a solution to market this fall, this one from Powermat is the most ambitious attempt at wireless charging to date.



First you pick out a $39 charging case for your iPhone or iPod touch (solutions also available for devices like DS and BlackBerry at various prices), then you choose a $99 charging mat, either the slim “Home and Office” mat or the “Portable” mat that folds up and comes with a carrying case. Either mat can hold up to three devices, which means you can buy up to three cases for your various devices and only have to buy one mat. The mat includes a generic square block and a series of tips (including an iPhone/iPod tip) which allow you to use one of the three charging points on the mat for a random device such as an iPod nano. If that’s your only use for the Powermat (which is to say, if they don’t offer a charging case for your primary device), then the whole thing will feel pointless; but as a way of adding a random extra device to the mix in addition to your iPhone or iPod touch, it’s not a bad throw-in. I’m also impressed with the wind-up power cable, which feels Apple-inspired (and that’s a good thing).



The iPhone charging case itself is a two-piece hard plastic shell that’s surprisingly normally shaped, as the rectangular charging panel on the back does stick out but not by too much; the case felt fine in my pocket all day. The main attraction, though, is the inclusion of a micro-USB port on the bottom of the case which (with the included micro-USB cable) allows you to connect your encased iPhone to your computer for syncing purposes. In other words, the Powermat solution sets you up so you theoretically never have to remove your iPhone (or iPod touch) from the charging case again: toss it on the mat nightly for charging, connect it to your computer via the cable as needed for syncing.



As such the Powermat solution is a more complete product than its primary competitor, the Wildcharge. But that comes at a cost, as one mat and one case, which will cost you a hundred and forty bucks from Powermat, can be had from Wildcharge for $79 in a bundle. This leads to the question of whether the Powermat, priced at nearly twice as much, turns out to be twice the product.



Based on my side by side tests, I’d have to say the answer is muddy. Right away you see that the Powermat allows you to charge three devices instead of two, and comes with the generic universal adapter. But I actually found it easier to toss my iPhone onto the Wildcharge, where it can pick up a charge anywhere on the mat’s surface, than on the Powermat where you have to hit one of three dots on the mat; miss one of the Powermat’s dots by even an inch, and it won’t charge. There are built-in sound effects to let you know that you’ve hit the dot, or that it’s slipped off the dot – as annoying as those sound effects are, I never did bother to turn them off because it’s just that easy to miss the charging dot if you don’t have the audio feedback.



As far as the iPhone charging case, I significantly prefer the Powermat case overall, both because of the inclusion of the micro-USB port and because the Powermat case is more normal-shaped than the Wildcharge case which is far more asymmetrical in shape. One potential concern I had with the Powermat case is that the two sliders that connect the top and bottom pieces on the sides are extremely thin and fragile-looking. Although they held up just fine during my testing, my hands-on experiences with dozens of plastic iPhone cases over the years leaves me a bit worried about how sliding connectors that thin will hold up over the long term. Then again, if you never remove the case, then there won’t be much opportunity for the connectors to break anyway.



Hate to say it, but while the Powermat is the better solution overall, dollar for dollar it’s not worth paying nearly twice as much for this solution (for one device) as you’d pay for the competing Wildcharge solution. But if money is no object, then the Powermat’s bells and whistles are tempting. Come to think of it, if you’re buying a product like this one, then you’ve likely got some money to begin with, as you’re basically paying all this money to avoid sticking a cable into your iPhone each night. But products like this do show a lot of promise for what might be possible in the future.

Learn more about the Powermat at Powermat.com.