Powermat presumably doesn't conform to the new Qi standard so it probably isn't worth investing in induction just yet.

Fair point but how long will the Qi consortium take before they have product in the market place, how long before it's supported by Nokia (who I know are a member) as standard? I think including Qi technology as standard in their next high-end device would be a key differentiator for Nokia, but I doubt it will happen.

Given how slowly Qi has been moving forward I think it's still another 18-24 months away from having anything on the market, and even longer before it appears as standard in Nokia devices.

Are you really considering spending
3X $60 for the mats + $30-40 for the battery+cover = $210-$220 for a charger?

For that price you can get a second phone (including charger), or some 50 betteries+chargers

Yeah, because the mats can be used for multiple phones/devices (certainly at home) and the convenience would be great. So often in the past I have realised the phone has almost no charge at the end of the working day and if I decide to go out on the town I'm left without a phone for most of the evening. Keeping the battery topped up throughout the day almost without thinking about it by using a Powermat would mean the phone is always at 100% charge when I leave the office.

Obviously the mats are one-off purchases, and can be used with other phones in future as I upgrade devices (assuming those devices are supported by Powermat, and my guess is the company will support most mass market devices in future).

And if you have a partner and/or kids at home each with their own phone the reduced number of chargers plugged into wall sockets and left on 24x7 may even save money in the long-term - one large mat with one charger could serve up to 3 or more people in one household.

Eventually you'll just be buying new batteries/covers for each new device, so $30-$40 for each device isn't that big a deal for this level of convenience. Maybe at some point in the future Qi will make Powermat redundant but until then it's not that big an outlay.

I could, but neither would be very practical so I'd just have wasted that money.

Any charging method is better than the detachable-usb-port one

Any reduction on the wear to the microUSB port is a worthwhile investment. I wonder how the N900 software would react to the battery being charged without interaction with the USB hardware though?

The N900 battery.. well let's admit it, sucks. It doesn't last more than a day, so I believe I speak for everyone when I say that given the right price (and maybe a mAh increase) everybody would love to have one.

Yet another good reason.

That's a good question actually. The software may not be able to detect that it's charging, however since it updates the icon in the status regardless of the state of the battery, you should see the level go up.

This also sounds like the kind of thing Mugen would be interested in, unless there is something proprietary in the casing.

Would be? As far as I know Mugen already released a battery and cover http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sourc...cFR7Qb2_zGvyyQ

Isn't the power management hardware (RETU?) on most Nokias (inc. N900) the same though?

Would the power management hardware in the N8 (also charged over USB) be implemented significantly differently to that in the N900?

Technical considerations such as this may be one more reason why the N900 isn't supported, but I'd have thought that Nokia would have a fairly standard power management system in place across most of their phones.