Josh Hendrickson
Do you love having a PopSocket Grip on your phone, but hate removing it for wireless charging? Chances are, you felt compelled to make a decision—give up the convenient handgrip or give up wireless charging. Now you don’t have to! PopSocket’s new $60 PopPower Home wireless chargers work with the company’s fashionable accessories—-well mostly.
The reason Popsocket Grips don’t work wireless chargers is pretty straightforward. Wireless chargers aren’t very powerful (for a variety of reasons) and need your phone to be as close to the charging mat as possible—specifically, directly on it.
Your phone contains a wireless charging coil, and the charger does too. You’re mostly trying to “touch” the two coils together. Any barrier will prevent an optimal charge, or in many cases, any charge at all.
Well, that’s exactly what the PopSocket is for wireless charging, a giant barrier in the way. It lifts your phone too high for the coils to interact. But PopSocket has an elegant solution for that problem—carve a hole in the charger for your Grip. When you lay your phone on the PopPower Home, your PopGrip will slip into the cavity, allowing the coils of your phone and charger to nestle together.
As can be expected, PopPower Home Qi-certified fast wireless chargers come in a variety of color styles that look right at home with PopGrips. And if you don’t care for PopSocket Grips, you can still use the charger. In the time we spent with demo units at CES, we came away impressed enough to hand it one of our Best in CES awards.
Do keep in mind that the PopPower Home won’t work with every PopSocket Grip. No wireless charger plays well with metal, and this is no exception—so you’ll need to remove Metal PopGrips before charging. The same goes for PopGrips with lip balm—charging would work, but the lip balm will melt (gross). And PopSockets is careful to note that if you have a wallet accessory, wireless chargers can demagnetize your credit and debit cards. So you should remove those too.
But if you have any of PopSocket’s other more charger friendly grips, you can buy the wireless charger today from the company’s website.
