OPPO Over-The-Air Wireless Charging To Be Revealed This Week

As convenient as wireless charging may be at times, their convenience ends the moment you lift the phone off its pad even by just a bit to use it. There have been multiple attempts in the past to solve that problem but now it seems that smartphone makers are making bold steps in that direction. Following Xiaomi and Motorola, OPPO is preparing to show off its own take on over-the-air or OTA wireless charging and it is interestingly using its rollable phone to do so.

Current wireless charging technologies, at least the Qi standard, have room for only a very narrow gap between charging coils. While some manufacturers have found ways around the requirement to keep a phone centered in place, they still haven't solved the problem of using the phone while wirelessly charging. At least not until this year.

Late last month, both Xiaomi and Motorola showed off experimental technologies that allowed phones to be charged over a greater distance. They both have different ways of doing it, like Xiaomi using a large box containing the hardware needed for such distance wireless charging or Motorola pausing charging when a human body part is detected between charger and phone. OPPO's version is also different, though both in good and disappointing ways.

A short video clip posted on Weibo shows the company's OPPO X1 2021 rollable concept phone taking advantage of this no-contact wireless charging. The charger seems to be a nondescript but thick surface that also functions as a regular charger. There also seems to be a shorter distance allowed unlike Xiaomi's or Motorola's.

Of course, OPPO will have more details to reveal this week at MWC Shanghai. Curiously, the technology is being demonstrated on a phone that OPPO says it won't be bringing to market yet, though that doesn't preclude the manufacturer from putting the necessary charging bits in its future "regular" phones.