Case Study
POQQ
Consumer Electronics — Smart Wireless Charging
BLE companion app for a Belgian luxury wireless charger with Qi 2.2 and premium walnut-wood design
POQQ
Tech Partnership
Utility
3 Months
- Charge your smartphone with elegance
- Available in different materials
Key Outcomes
Delivered a production-ready iOS companion app at just 9.5 MB — connecting to the POQQ charger over BLE for real-time battery and charging status monitoring
Established a reliable BLE communication protocol that reports battery level, charging state, and adaptive power output (5–25 W) with sub-second latency
Enabled a premium unboxing-to-first-use experience, reinforcing POQQ’s luxury positioning (handmade walnut wood, Qi 2.2, Belgian-designed)
The Challenge
Before partnering with Iottive, POQQ was facing several issues:
Hardware-to-Software Gap
POQQ had engineered an elegant charger with a 10 Ah lithium-ion battery and Qi 2.2 protocol, but lacked the mobile software expertise to surface device telemetry — battery level, charging state, and power output — to the end user.
Premium Brand Experience
The charger retails as a luxury statement piece, handmade from premium walnut wood. Any companion app had to match that brand register: minimal, refined, and reliable from the first launch. A bloated or generic utility would undercut the product’s positioning.
BLE Protocol Design
The charger’s microcontroller needed a custom BLE communication layer that could relay multiple data points — remaining charge across 5–25 individual device cycles, real-time wattage adaptation from 5 W to 25 W, and USB-C dual-function status — without draining the charger’s own battery.
Multi-Device Compatibility
POQQ supports iPhone, Android, Google devices, and earbuds, each drawing different power profiles. The app had to interpret and display the charger’s intelligent power-output adjustments accurately, regardless of the device placed on the pad.
Our Solution
Iottive delivered a focused BLE companion app under a lean product development model, matching the client’s emphasis on restraint and quality.
BLE/IoT Expertise
Our BLE engineers designed a lightweight communication protocol between the POQQ charger’s microcontroller and the iOS app. The protocol handles battery-level telemetry, real time charging-state changes, and adaptive wattage reporting — all over a single BLE characteristic set to minimize connection overhead and power draw.
Design Thinking Approach
We conducted collaborative design sprints with POQQ’s product team, aligning app aesthetics with the charger’s premium materials and minimalist Scandinavian-Belgian design language. Every screen was stripped to essentials: battery level, charge status, and power output — nothing more.
Project Planning & Execution
The project followed two-week sprint cycles with milestone demos. BLE protocol validation, UI implementation, and hardware integration testing ran in parallel tracks, keeping the timeline compact without sacrificing quality assurance on real hardware.
Functionalities Delivered
• Real-time battery level display (percentage and estimated charges remaining)
• Charging-state indicator (idle, active, complete) with animated transitions
• Adaptive power-output readout (5 W – 25 W) based on connected device
• USB-C connection status and dual-function port monitoring
• Background BLE reconnection for persistent device pairing
Implementation Highlights
BLE Protocol Architecture
Defined a compact GATT service with custom characteristics for battery SOC, charge current, wattage mode, and fault codes. The protocol operates within a single connection interval to preserve the charger’s 10 Ah battery life across multiple charge cycles.
Low-Power Connectivity
Implemented BLE advertisement parsing and background reconnection using Core Bluetooth on iOS. The app maintains awareness of the charger without persistent connections, waking only on state-change notifications to keep phone battery impact negligible
Minimal UI Design
Built a single-screen dashboard that mirrors POQQ’s design ethos — walnut-toned color accents, generous whitespace, and typographic hierarchy. The app weighs just 9.5 MB, free of unnecessary frameworks or assets.
Intelligent Power Display
The app parses the charger’s real-time power negotiation data (Qi 2.2 protocol) and presents the active wattage tier — from 5 W for earbuds to 15 W for standard phones to 25 W for fast charge-capable devices — as a clear, glanceable readout.
Hardware Integration Testing
Validated BLE communication across POQQ and POQQI models, testing with iPhones (12 through 16 series), Samsung Galaxy, Google Pixel, and AirPods. Verified accurate telemetry under varying charge loads and ambient temperatures.
OTA-Ready Architecture
Structured the BLE protocol with a firmware update characteristic, allowing POQQ to push microcontroller updates through the app in future releases without requiring hardware recalls or USB based flashing.
Results & Impact
- 9.5 MB production app — among the lightest BLE companion apps in the consumer electronics category
- Sub-second telemetry refresh: battery level, charge state, and wattage update within 800 ms of a state change
- Zero critical BLE disconnection issues reported across beta testing with 6+ device models
- Brand-consistent UX validated by POQQ’s design team as matching the premium walnut-wood product identity
- OTA-ready architecture positions POQQ for future feature expansion without a full app rebuild
“We needed a development partner who understood that our app is an extension of a physical product — not a standalone utility. Iottive’s BLE expertise and their discipline in keeping the app minimal and refined were exactly right. The result feels like it belongs next to our charger on a walnut desk.”
— Bart de backer , POQQ
Lessons & Best Practices
Design for the Brand, Not the Feature List
A luxury hardware product demands a companion app that exercises restraint. We deliberately omitted features that didn’t serve the core use case — battery status and charge monitoring — keeping the experience focused and premium.
Validate BLE on Real Hardware Early
We integrated with prototype charger units in sprint two, catching Qi 2.2 power-negotiation edge cases before they became architectural debt.
Minimize App Footprint
Keeping the binary at 9.5 MB required disciplined dependency management — no heavy frameworks, no bundled assets beyond what the UI demanded. This pays dividends in download conversion and first launch speed.
Architect for OTA from Day One
Even when firmware updates aren’t in the launch scope, reserving a BLE characteristic for OTA avoids costly protocol renegotiation later.
Technology
Comprehensive IoT Technology Stack
From devices and connectivity to cloud, apps, and security — we leverage a full-stack IoT ecosystem to build scalable, secure, and future-ready solutions.
iOS Swift
Core Bluetooth
GATT Services
Qi 2.2 Protocol
Xcode Instruments
TestFlight
Why Iottive’s the Right Partner
- Deep BLE protocol expertise: we’ve shipped companion apps for consumer electronics, medical devices, and industrial sensors —giving us pattern-level knowledge of GATT design, power optimization, and cross-device compatibility
- Design discipline for premium brands: our team understands that a luxury product’s app must earn its place — no feature bloat, no generic UI kits, no unnecessary permissions
- Hardware-integrated testing culture: we test on physical devices from sprint one, not emulators, ensuring BLE behavior matches real-world conditions across chipsets and OS versions
Next Steps for POQQ
Android companion app: extend the BLE experience to Samsung, Google Pixel, and broader Android ecosystem users
Firmware OTA delivery: activate the reserved BLE characteristic to push microcontroller updates directly through the app
Multi-charger management: support households with multiple POQQ/POQQI units, showing aggregated battery status in a single dashboard
Charging analytics: introduce historical usage data — charge cycles, average wattage, and battery health trends — to deepen user engagement with the product