ROHM on tuonut markkinoille uuden langattoman latauksen piirisarjan, joka on suunniteltu nimenomaan äärimmäisen pieniin puettaviin laitteisiin. Uusi ML7670/ML7671-ratkaisu vie NFC-pohjaisen latauksen kokoluokkaan, jossa se mahtuu jopa älysormuksiin.

Älysormusten yleistyminen erityisesti terveys- ja hyvinvointikäytössä on paljastanut perinteisten lataustapojen rajoitteet. Johdollinen lataus on sormuksessa hankalaa, ja Qi-standardi vaatii liian suuren kelarakenteen. ROHM ratkaisee ongelman hyödyntämällä 13,56 megahertsin NFC-tekniikkaa, joka mahdollistaa selvästi pienemmät antennit.

Uuden piirisarjan maksimitehonsiirto on 250 milliwattia, mikä riittää pienten laitteiden lataukseen. Vastaanotinpiirin koko on vain 2,28 × 2,56 × 0,48 millimetriä, ja siihen on integroitu tarvittavat tehoelektroniikan komponentit. Ratkaisun hyötysuhde nousee parhaimmillaan 45 prosenttiin tässä teholuokassa.

Piirisarja on yhteensopiva NFC Forum WLC 2.0 -määrityksen kanssa, joten se toimii osana laajenevaa NFC-latausekosysteemiä. Teknologia on jo käytössä japanilaisen SOXAIn SOXAI RING 2 -älysormuksessa.

“Seeing is believing,” Willo co-founder and President Marko Voutilainen tells me as I take a seat in a Las Vegas hotel suite to witness what the company hopes will be a revolution in wireless power. It could render the charging cables that rule our lives and clog up our drawers obsolete for good.

The tech that Willo showed me doesn’t rely on charging pads, line of sight, directional targeting or even immediate proximity. Instead, it allows devices to be charged simply by existing within the force field of the power source.

The demo I’m being shown looks unassuming. They tell me I shouldn’t get caught up too much with the form factor of the power source — a simple gray-white cube. This isn’t a consumer device that’s for sale, merely a means to demonstrate the technology to me.

Willo CEO Hari Santamala picks up several receivers, black boxes shaped like phones with LEDs on the top. As he moves them to within 15 inches or so of the power source, the LEDs light up. He moves them around the cube, rotating them in different directions. The LEDs remain lit.

Making power cables the floppy disks of tomorrow
Unfortunately, I’m not allowed to take any pictures or videos. This week at CES, Willo is emerging from stealth mode to show the world what it can do, but it’s still playing its cards close to its chest.

The core technology is based on more than a decade of research by the company co-founder and CTO Nam Ha-Van. The company is claiming a number of world firsts with its wireless power tech, including the ability to rotate devices at any angle while charging, along with the ability to charge multiple devices at once.

Santamala talks me through his vision for how it would exist in the home. “You have to build the transmitter in a way that it’s kind of a natural part of your environment,” he says. “Ideally, we don’t see any of this,” he adds, gesturing to the cube.

You could sit on the sofa with your phone in your pocket, and it would be quietly charging while you watch TV. If you were working from home, you could move freely around your house with your laptop, never having to worry about plugging it in.

“We want to do to power cables, what floppy disks are to us today,” Voutilainen says. “They’re remnants of the past.”

It feels like the thing we’ve been waiting for — the way wireless charging was always supposed to be. So when can we expect to get it?

Willo is here at CES meeting journalists like me, but also the kind of partners it will need to adopt this technology and take it out into the world. Voutilainen and Santamala are cagey about their ideal strategy for doing this, but it feels like they’re hinting towards something open and large-scale. Comparisons to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are thrown around.

“This can really change our everyday lives if introduced correctly in a very kind of open and driving-the-market-forward kind of way,” Santamala says. The company’s tech is “pretty ready” for industrialization, he adds — it just depends on their partners’ use cases and timelines.

European deep-tech company Willo emerges from stealth with demonstration of alignment-free wireless power
European deep-tech company Willo emerges from stealth with demonstration of alignment-free wireless power
PR Newswire

HELSINKI and LAS VEGAS, Jan. 8, 2026

HELSINKI and LAS VEGAS, Jan. 8, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — After nearly two years in stealth, Willo Technologies Oy (“Willo”), a European deep-tech company, today announced its public launch, unveiling a working system that demonstrates wireless power delivery without alignment or directional targeting, a long-standing challenge in the field of wireless power.

Willo is demonstrating the delivery of power wirelessly over the air to devices while they are moving, rotating freely through 360 degrees, and operating with full misalignment. Multiple devices can be powered simultaneously. The system does not rely on pads, ports, line-of-sight, or directional beaming. The demonstration takes place in person in the company’s demo suite, and recording is not permitted.

“Most wireless power systems depend on alignment or directionality,” said Nam Ha-Van, PhD, co-founder and CTO of Willo. “The hard part isn’t making power wireless, it’s keeping it working as devices move and rotate. That’s what our system is designed to handle.”

The company emphasizes that this announcement is not a consumer product launch, nor a commercial partnership announcement.

“Wireless power has been promised for decades,” said Harri Santamala, co-founder and CEO of Willo. “Many systems stop working once devices move or rotate. That history is why we’re starting with demonstrations, not promises.”