Kickstarter project is running to fund a device that combines induction charging with magnetic levitation to maximize style points.
Strange, isn’t it, how ubiquitous the ritual of phone charging has become? We do it in cars, in airports and at coffee shops. At home, we do it as soon as we walk in the door, or just before we go to bed. Twenty years ago, the phrase “phone charger” didn’t even make any sense.
There are plenty of ways to charge your phone these days, with wires or without. But if you want to aim for pure style points, check out the Kickstarter campaign for the OvRcharge, a wireless device that levitates your phone as it charges.
This may be final evidence that Western society has too much time on its hands, but as the demo video illustrates, it does look uncommonly cool. Place your phone on the charging station, and it just hovers there, slowly rotating.
The trick, as you may have intuited, is a set of paired magnets: one in the charging base and one in the phone case you slip around your smartphone. The makers of the OvRcharge device say that it will work with “most” phones — popular models will get their own custom-fit case, older models can be wedged in with an attachment.
The case itself contains the induction receiver that collects power being wirelessly beamed up from the base, which you plug into the wall as usual. The case also has a carefully configured downward-facing magnet that keeps the phone aloft and spinning about an inch above the surface of the charger. The two processes — induction charging and magnetic levitation — work in parallel and do not interfere with one another, according to the design team.
The OvRcharge base can even levitate and charge some smaller and lighter tablets, and the designers are offering an OvRcharge Ultra charging station to handle bigger devices.
Various early bird pledge options on the Kickstarter page offer package deals starting at around $175 to $200 for OvRcharge and OvRcharge Ultra. If all goes according to plan, your levitating phone charger will be delivered in December. Weird elephant lamp not included.