Latte
Starbucks Officially Debuts Wireless Charging in Shops
Starbucks has begun to deploy wireless charging stations at select coffee shops in the San Francisco Bay Area. The company said 200 stores now offer wireless charging spots on tables and coffee bars. Customers with compatible handsets can place their devices on the spots to receive a power boost while sipping a latte. Starbucks is working with Powermat, which uses the inductive charging standard developed by the Power Matters Alliance. Some phones in the market use the PMA standard for wireless charging, but many do not. Powermat makes a wide array of sleeves and other accessories for devices that don't support wireless charging on their own. Starbucks will allow customers to buy or borrow a special Powermat Ring, which is PMA compliant and plugs into phones via USB. The Powermat Ring costs $10, or can be used for free when purchasing food or beverages. Earlier this year, Starbucks said it will add about a dozen wireless charging stations to each of its 7,500 locations in the U.S., though many of the deployments won't take place until 2015. There are still competing standards in the wireless charging space. Qi, the standard created by the Wireless Power Consortium, still has strong support in some quarters and is supported by a number of phones. Starbucks' wireless charging project is being supported by AT&T, which is a member of the PMA.
Texas Instruments Debuts 1.8GHz OMAP 4 Chip
Texas Instruments today announced the OMAP4470, a new dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor that offers up to 1.8GHz per core. Texas Instruments says the main benefits of this processor are an 80% increase in Web browsing performance; 2.5 times the graphics capabilities; double the imaging and video layering; and support for up to three HD screens running at the same time at resolutions as high as QXGA (2048x1536). Texas Instruments says the OMAP4470 is ideal for operating systems such as Android and is just as power efficient as its predecessors. The chip will sample in the latter half of 2011, with devices expected to become available during the first half of 2012.
