Intel smart bowl that will charge gadgets

Intel smart bowl that will charge gadgets  

A large bowl that sits in the kitchen or the hall or the dining room where you put all the junk you don't have any other place for: keys, mail, rubber bands, matches, batteries, take-out menus, whatever.

At CES, the big tech conference in Las Vegas, Intel unveiled a "smart bowl" that could change all that forever. It's a wireless charging bowl: You dump your phone, iPod, earpiece, Fitbit or any other gadget that needs a charge into it and - boom! - pick it out a while later and it's fully charged.

No more wires. No more jacks. No more plugs and sockets.

Your gadgets go into the bowl (probably with a bunch of other non-tech junk too) and voila! They're charged.

The irony of the announcement is that Intel CEO Brian Krzanich unveiled a bunch of new, potentially game-changing initiatives at his keynote last night: a PC the size of a golf ball called Edison and an end to the use of "conflict minerals" from African war zones in its products, among them.

Now this would be cool: a wireless charging bowl.

If you're anything like me, you have a specific place where you drop your keys and phone at the end of the day. What if the bowl you dropped them into charged them up for you? Intel has plans for just that. Sneaked in among the several new innovations the company showcased at its 2014 CES keynote address was a smart wireless charging bowl. Intel CEO Brian Krzanich discussed the bowl in the section of the presentation about solving problems by making everything smart. It seems they're starting small. Small, however, doesn't mean insignificant.

But don't get too excited yet. Right now, the Intel charging bowl pairs only with Intel's newly announced smart headset. However, the company plans to expand it to accommodate a wider array of devices, including phones, tablets, and Ultrabooks. For now, Intel's smart headset will charge automatically as soon as you drop it into the wireless bowl.

The bowl and stand measure approximately 10 inches in diameter and utilize magnetic resonance technology, which is the basis of recent A4WP innovations. It's a technology that makes it possible to charge multiple devices simultaneously without precise placement.

Unfortunately, Intel hasn't released details on pricing or availability, but we will provide you with those specifics as soon as we have them.