And low-power really means low powered... Like... milliamps. If you fed an RFID chip directly, you'd need to supply about 1 mW depending on the specific chip... 1 milliwatt...

In order to feed that chip with a transmitter you feed up to 2W. So up to 99.95% losses... It's NOT economical for any other device that isn't super low power.

Hell Qi charging is just as bad. Qi2, newest and greatest... Which you basically have the devices touching only get up to 80% at absolute best efficiency numbers. Every mm you add, drops that number significantly.

None of this is going to enable "battery free" for basically anything that any consumer would care to be battery free. And honestly I wish we wouldn't pump the airwaves with all sorts of garbage just because it enabled the most minimal amount of "convenience" for things that never needed to be convenient to begin with.

Not new indeed. Kinda reminds me of old Nextel phones that you would put a little LED on the antenna and it would blink from the EMI when sending and receiving data.

Tap-to-pay on credit card chips, too.