DAVID POGUE ESSAY

Would you still want the power to fly, if you were required to put on a 117-piece set of chain mail before each flight- Would you still value instant teleportation, if you had to fill out a 72-page form before each jaunt- Would you still want control over the universe, if you had to power it by pedaling an exercise bike 14 hours a day?
In other words, how much inconvenience would you tolerate in exchange for a little magic- Thanks to a new product called the WildCharge mat, that question is no longer hypothetical.
The concept is irresistible: For $60, you get a thin pad that’s about the size of a typical mouse pad (20 x 15 centimeters). Its surface is covered by 12 shiny chrome stripes. Each day when you come home, you just set your cellphone, iPod and BlackBerry directly on the mat. They connect to it solidly with a subtle magnetic click -and you marvel as they begin charging automatically.
In other words, this single, sleek pad replaces the hideous mass of heavy, ugly, black power bricks that are currently required to recharge your mobile gadgets. And since it can charge five gadgets at once, the mat also reclaims four power outlets on your wall ; the mat’s own power cord uses only a single wall socket.
The first time you plop your Black- Berry or Razr onto the WildCharge and see it light up with the “battery charging” message, without your having had to deal with a single cord, plug or connector, you can’t help smiling. This, you think, is how things should work.
Now, WildCharge is not the only company pursuing the dream of cordless- recharging surfaces on desks, counters and bureaus. It is, however, the first company to bring such a product to market. The difference, it says, is in the technology it uses. Its rivals are trying to incorporate something called wireless inductive power, where rapidly changing magnetic fields transfer the power. That’s how cordless electric toothbrushes get recharged.
The advantage is that you don’t need visible metal contacts to conduct the power; the disadvantages are low efficiency, susceptibility to interference - and, evidently, difficulty bringing a product to market.
The WildCharge uses conductive power, meaning that the little metal charging terminals on your phone, iPod, or whatever come in direct contact with the charging mat’s metal strips. There’s no radiation. There are no magnetic fields, either, so there’s no danger to credit cards, hard drives or videotapes. And there are no electric shocks; if flesh, liquid or some metal object touches the metallic strips on the pad, the power cuts off instantly .
So what about the trade-off?
The problem is that the electricity somehow has to find a pathway from the charging pad to the gadget. Any WildCharge-compatible gadget has four tiny raised nubbins on its back panel, metal pinhead contacts strategically arranged so that they’ll get the necessary power no matter how sloppily you toss the device onto the pad. Unfortunately, no gadgets are made that way today.
Therefore, you have to retrofit each of your existing appliances with backpanel contact dots - at a price of $35 apiece. For the BlackBerry Curve and BlackBerry Pearl, you get a rubbery silicone “skin” that slips over the phone. Not only does this skin have the requisite contact points on the back, but it doubles as a handy protective case .
For the Motorola Razr phone, the retrofit is much sleeker: you get a replacement back panel (battery cover) for the phone. This approach adds no bulk to the phone in your pocket, although there’s a five-centimeter rubber arm that snakes down to the phone’s charging jack. You have to yank it out when you want to plug anything else in there.
And that, at the moment, is it. Those are the only three Wild- Charge-compatible gadgets: BlackBerry Pearl, BlackBerry Curve and Motorola Razr.
The company says that it will offer iPod and iPhone adapters later this year; photos and descriptions indicate that these, too, will take the form of silicone skins. Their bottom edges plug into the recharging jack at the bottom of the iPod or iPhone. WildCharge is also working on a universal cellphone adapter .
You should note, too, that the mat takes longer to recharge your gadget than the original power cord. The company won’t say exactly how much slower, noting only that it’s equivalent to trickle-charging from a computer’s USB jack rather than a power cord.
So yes, the WildCharge is magical technology. But if you had any additional wishes, you might wish for one that didn’t require so much modification of your electronics. You might wish for compatibility with more gadgets - like laptops, which WildCharge says it’s working on.
Maybe the WildCharge mat will indeed catch on like wildfire. Today, though, it’s exclusively for BlackBerry and Razr owners. It brings supreme recharging convenience - at a price.