Future Sony smartphones could could recharge wirelessly in just an hour

Yes, it's futuristic, but that ponderous trickle of energy from base station to device isn't great for impatient types. Sony, however, thinks that it's solved the problem of slow wireless charging with its latest invention. The new unit, based on a forthcoming version of the Qi standard, promises to pump 10-to-15 watts of energy into your device -- theoretically cutting charging times down to just an hour. While so much power would normally cause your smartphone to overheat and combust, chip and power company Rohm promises that its new control chips can handle the temperature issues. Unfortunately, we won't be seeing this hardware turn up inXperia phones until the second half of 2014, but at least that means we've got some time to recycle all of our cables.