McDonalds has been testing wireless charging in Europe since 2013, and now it appears ready to begin rolling it out on a larger scale in the UK. A company known as Aircharge is installing 600 Qi wireless charging points in 50 restaurants, although most appear to be concentrated in major business districts.
The Aircharge stations are designed to be water resistant, to avoid any damage in the inevitable event that a drink gets spilled on them. They are also equipped with regular connector for smartphones that are not capable of wireless charging. Naturally, the service is provided free of charge and is meant to encourage customers to come in and have something to eat while their smartphones recharge.
One location where the wireless charging was being test, reported that customers would stand in line for up to 30 minutes just to find a free charging mat. Which is quite impressive considering that it is the UK and most of those customers would have also felt the need to buy something while in the restaurant.
Considering that the charging mats are already available in McDonalds in London and Milton Keynes, we can only hope that the experiment is successful enough to expand to other countries. Like Malaysia, which would only encourage us to spend even more time in the fast food outlet.
[Source: QI@CES, via Phonearena]
