by Hanafi Kaka | Resident Techie
This is not a space ship, relax. It won’t take you to a galaxy far far away (Star Wars fans can I hear a roar!). There are no aliens coming to abduct and probe you. You’re safe here. This sexy, flat ol’ thing is actually the Samsung Wireless Charging Pad.
A short light-skinned chica with lips like Rihanna’s introduced me to it somewhere in town. She kept talking on and on about how awesome this little space ship was. Speaking in all this confusing geeky lingo like she hangs out with Tim Cook. She kept mentioning stuff to do with amperes and voltages, hertz, all the wires and starved, squalid Korean children trapped inside that little disc – shovelling hot coal into a furnace so that our phones can last us one more hour in traffic.
You should have seen my dead face staring at her with my mouth open. She was on to so many numbers except the one that really mattered – the price of that damned thing, which is about 5G’s.
I was lost watching her red Rihanna lips move about, forming words I can’t recall, thinking of flying monkeys and cowardly lions.
You see, I’m not one of those guys who can easily do four-figure calculations in their heads with cassava crisps crunching loudly between their teeth. Sometimes I think I’m dumb. I can’t think in terms of sijui…feet, meters and kilometres and all that. I get headaches. Seriously, migraines. I can’t memorise numbers longer than four digits.
But I’m twenty-three years old now, I can no longer say that my birth year is IPPZ. I might never get laid. So it can be a little bit of a struggle. Because I think in words, pictures and feelings. If you have to tell me how far a place is, don’t tell me in kilometres, tell me in terms of time. Say, it’s a five minutes-walk from the office to Yaya Centre. Tell me how many shoes I have to line one after another until I get to the stage, not how many meters. It hurts. Buildings to me are not sijui fifty feet high, I think in terms of storeys. If somebody fell from a balcony, you had better not tell me it was I don’t know, twenty feet high. He fell seven storeys down…so he’s either dead or definitely very dead.
And there was this lady at the Samsung store hammering numbers and units into my head. Ati that thing is actually called EP-PG920IBUGUS, it comes with a 2A Travel Adapter and a User Manual.
All she had to say was that it’s the kind of thing you carry around if you hate power banks and wires like me. It’s flat as a terrible cocktail, and it comes in the sexiest black ever. It charges fast and drains slowly. So you just charge it full and take it with you everywhere (if you feel like it). Place it on a table, on your head, whichever works. And all you have to do is place your phone on it. That’s it. You can go about your business now. Check on it later.
Sounds awesome, right? Wait till you hear that it probably won’t work with your Huawei YY511 or something. Because it’s only compatible with Qi-enabled smartphones – that is smartphones that can charge wirelessly. Which are many as 12 models in the world:
- Samsung Galaxy S5
- Samsung Galaxy S6
- Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge
- Samsung Galaxy Note 4
- Google Nexus 4-7
- Motorola Droid Maxx
- Nokia Lumia 920
- Nokia Lumia 928
- Nokia Lumia 929
- Nokia Lumia 930
- Nokia Lumia 1020
- Nokia Lumia 1520
Some of these, like Galaxy S4, Galaxy S5, Galaxy Note 3, Galaxy Note 4, Galaxy Note edge, require Wireless Charging Battery Covers, which are sold separately.
So if yours isn’t on this list, you could always charge your phone wirelessly by placing on a hot pan. Si it’s just heat we are looking for here, ama?