New patent describes tech that would offer fast charging

Aug 28, 2018 09:37 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft may be developing a new so-called “ultrafast” wireless charging system for its devices, if a recently-discovered patent gets the go-ahead for mass production.

Called Smart Battery for Ultrafast Charging, the patent (via WindowsCentral), describes how a wireless charging system can use not one charging coil, as it’s the case of the current implementations, but a different approach relying on a smart battery compromising multiple modules.

All these modules would work together and be connected to an integrated controller to manage the power supply, thus offering faster charging times even when no cable is used.

Technically, this particular system can be used on pretty much any device, starting with Surface devices and ending with activity trackers, though the latter are missing from Microsoft’s portfolio at the moment. They would also fit phones just right, but we all know what happened with Microsoft’s mobile devices.

Still in patent stage

“A common goal for many of these computing devices is to wireless charge the battery faster rate. Accordingly, if the maximum charging power per receive is fixed, the battery cannot be charged faster without increasing the number of wireless receivers. Further, problems may occur when the number of wireless power receivers increases,” Microsoft explains.

“There are continuing increases in the efficiency and storage capabilities of batteries, and a continuing desire for improving the rate of charge of smart batteries. Therefore, there is a need in the art for more efficient charging of smart batteries in computing devices.”

As with everything in patent stage, there’s no guarantee that this technology would ever make it to the market. But as it happened several times already, this patent shows that Microsoft has the know-how to build very advanced devices and adjacent technologies that would compete with the leaders on the market.

For the time being, however, the Surface lineup may be the only one to benefit if such a feature goes in production, though it could also make its way to other devices from different manufacturers.