Wired is more efficient, you can pick it up and use it while charging, and the cable usually comes free with the phone. What is the point of wireless charging pads?
It’s convenient to place my phone on at my computer and it’s just always charged. It is a little less efficient, but if you’re running a heater anyway then technically they’re both lossless (though gas heat may be cheaper for you if you have gas heat).
If someone claims to care about the climate, then using wireless charging makes them kind of a hypocrite. I asked ChatGPT to do some back-of-the-envelope math - so take these numbers with a grain of salt - but if everyone in the world switched to wireless charging, it would increase global energy consumption by around 12 TWh per year. That’s roughly equivalent to the total power usage of a small country like Iceland.
Huh, I never considered the inefficiency to be that bad
If someone claims to care about the climate, then using ChatGPT makes them an incredible hypocrite.
Kindly fuck all the way off
Some charging pads also prop up the phone at an angle, making it easy to read the screen while also not having to hold the phone up. Most phones have their charging port on the bottom, so a phone stand couldn’t be used while charging with a cord.
Maybe I’m old and prefer having the phone in my hand rather than propped at an angle unless I’m watching some videos, in which case my phone would be landscape mode anyways so the port is easily accessible
I’m also old, but I understand people do watch portrait videos. Sometimes a lot of them, in a single sitting. There’s a popular social media app which exclusively has short-form portrait videos.
I’m old enough that it would probably be creepy if I did use tik tok
Apple’s mag safe charger is pretty popular and you can easily hold the phone in portrait mode while charging (at 25W with the latest models). The puck is thin and sticks to the center of the back of the phone.
Does it charg as efficiently as a wired power bank?
That’s not physically possible.
But it is extremely efficient for what it is. The first number I found on google said it’s 95% efficient.
That doesn’t sound correct, considering the amount of wireless chargers that will take 10W, but can only deliver half that to the phone.
The one I’ve used on my Samsung isn’t as fast as a wired power bank, but I don’t need to wrangle the cables like I do with the wired ones. I wouldn’t use a magsafe power bank to charge my phone from 0 (too slow). But leaving it attached gives me an extra couple of hours with just a little extra weight. Useful for things like conventions or travel.
Not even close. Ifixit did some testing, daily MagSafe wireless charging uses 36% more energy than a wire (which includes idle power draw). It also means slower charging.
I use one in my car - it’s more convienet for short trips or trips with multiple stops. I do keep a cable for longer trips though, especially if I need to keep the screen on for GPS - the wireless charger makes the phone warm enough to stop charging over the course of an hour or so.
I’ve noticed that with the varying quality of USB cables, and them having broken/cracked wires over time, I usually get much faster charging when doing it wirelessly. If anything is way more consistent. With cords it’s a crap shot. Is this a fast charge cord? Was it cheaply made, is it deteriorating? I can use 4 different cords and get different results from each
Similar. I got a vehicle that had android auto, but not wireless. Plugging and unplugging all the time I’d go through a cable every few months. Power would work, but the shielding would break and it would screw with cell/GPS until I replaced the cable.
Got a wireless android auto adapter to stop buying cables. That’s great but I knew I wouldn’t plug in my phone every time like normal, so I use the wireless charging.
Yeah, to prevent the charging port becoming faulty?
I use wireless charging 99% of the time. It’s convenient to plop your phone or earbuds down and effortlessly grab them when it’s time to go.
The other reason I like wireless: less wear on your phone’s USB port. Even though USB-C is supposedly good for millions of plug/unplug cycles I’ve had several phones with USB-C that get wonky after about 2+ years. “Wonky” as in having to hold the cable just right to transfer data or even successfully fast charge.
Wireless charging drastically cuts down on the amount of times you’ll be ramming a USB cable into it’s port, hopefully prolonging it’s useful life.
Yeah, the USB port on all my phones was the first thing to go, and then you’re just stuck doing the stupid little dance of getting the cable to go in at the exact right angle to get it to charge. With wireless (especially with MagSafe), you just put it on the charger and you never need to worry about cables. I’ve got a plug on my USB port to keep dirt out now.
Wow, I’ve never had any issues with USB ports on any of my phones. Which one of us is the outlier? Do you ram the cable in too hard? Do you bend the connector in weird ways?
Nah, it’s just lint and other crap getting into the port. You can clean the USB-C ones easier than the micro-USB ones, but eventually they all go.
Adding on to this, it’s good to switch to wireless before the point gets wonky if you want to use the cable for data.
You do realize that wireless charging is also very inefficent and reduces your battery lifespan, right? It’s also kinda weird that your port goes bad after such a short time. Maybe you should clean it more often and make sure not to put any tension on it when you use it. I even have a 10 year old phone and the port (micro usb) still works perfectly fine.
It is more inefficiënt, yes. But why would it reduce battery lifespan? Is it because of the added heat from the wireless charging coils? My battery probably stays cooler with wireless charging then using the wired turbo charger. Which is more and more standard these days.
All our modern charging methods are really bad for batteries. Wireless is inductive which means the charging voltage is noisy and very variable, this means heat and that stresses the batteries faster. But, wired charging with PD uses really high voltages, which are sometimes way too fast. Also stressing the battery. We’ll see what comes of it but the recent couple of phone generations are prone to be the ones with the worse battery life expectancy.
Companies are usually aiming for 80% at two years time. That means that a phone that barely survives a day when new, will not make it through the day two years after. As the battery loses capacity, it requires more charges per day, accelerating the degradation.
Here’s iFixit assessment of wireless charging.
This is MKHB on why heat hurts batteries and how companies try to fight back the damage of fast charging.
I’ve been wireless charging exclusively for 5 years and had minimal change in battery life.
I’d be interested to see how you measure that. It’s also not really a matter of opinion. Even though you may not notice a wild difference, your battery did degrade more than it would’ve, if you’d used a wired charger.
Also, the inefficiency is bad enough for me to rule it out. You literally waste at least twice as much power compared to a wired charger (source). Although we’re not talking about a crazy amount of power, it’s pretty selfish to waste it just because you don’t want to plug in a charger.
I’ve had the phone for 6 1/2 years. It has a small 3000 mha battery. Initial reviews had it at 8 1/2 hours battery life at release. When I posted that I had been using the phone for 2 hours and was at 72% so extrapolated that 7 3/4 battery life. So less than a 10% drop. Granted I’m not a heavy phone user so I probably put less wear on my battery in general.
Yes use it for convince, but I’ve also had to replace phones for broken USB ports which in the grand scale is probably more wasteful than the extra power use.
Follow up: does it work well with cases?
Wireless charging is unaffected by normal plastic or silicone cases (unless it’s super thick, like an OtterBox). Metal cases don’t work.
That wonkiness often times is just lint jammed into the charging port, and a thorough cleaning fixes the issue
It’s heartening to see someone else sharing what’s usually my line! I recommend a wooden toothpick for the aforementioned cleaning.
Ditto. The plastics floss/pick combos work even better. Being thinner and super flexible, they are less likely to cause damage and reach the tiny crevices better.
When my mom finally ditched her land line and ported the number to a smart phone, getting a wireless charger that propped the phone up was a nice way to set up a sort of designated place to keep the phone (where the landline phone had been) so that there’s less chance she misplaces the phone or forgets to charge it.
You can also keep a wired charger in the same place but it charges faster
If charging speed were your top priority, sure. She doesn’t use her phone hardly at all so the battery rarely gets depleted much, therefore how quickly it charges isn’t really that important. Not having to mess with a wire makes it more convenient to grab and go when she does need it, and more convenient to put it back when done. And no risk of damaging the USB port.
I’m still confused about this “hassle” people have with a wire, like you just plug it in. I used a 2016 iphone se for 5 years, still use it now for an bedside alarm and have never had any issues with the port. I’ve used a samsung for the past 4 years and never had an issue with the port, now that I think of it, in the 20 years I’ve used cell phones I’ve never had any issues with any phone ports. I’m sure there are some that get damaged but it seems to be so unlikely that I don’t see the need to spend extra money on a pad
It is a hassle, even if very very slight. One you need to plug in something small. The other you just drop a big thing onto a slightly smaller big thing.
Arthritis, poor eyesight, poor lighting, temporary/permanent hand disability are some that I can think of that greatly benefits wireless charging and found plugging in a cable a hassle.
Fair enough, I didn’t mean to he ableist
Bonus: the landline was already wired so just don’t unplug it ever and use it like before.
We did have wireless handsets back in the day…
I didn’t feel like typing that part.
And they had little docks to charge them (and transmit) but they also make docks for your phone.
Unplug the phone
I bought a witeless magnetic battery recently, and what quickly turned me off was that it charges at ~2/3rd efficiency and speed than its wired mode, even though it’s fast wireless and a solid brand and build. Also heats up my phone battery way more, so I just snap it to my phone and use the short and unobtrusive usb-c cable to charge it instead.
Now, if I was changing phones every year or two and I didn’t care about keeping its battery life - sure, I’d use the wireless charging without worries, although it will still be slightly slower than wired (but still fast charging anyway).
I don’t trust public wired charging ports to anything other my mobile battery.
Since I can’t verify if a weird charging port won’t upload malware on site, I’d use wireless charging instead.
You should be able to use the charging only mode that’s under developer settings on your phone.
I just like being able to walk by the nightstand and have the phone “lock” to the charging pad when I lay it down.
In my car it is a lot more convenient than a charging cradle for being able to use turn by turn while driving.
On my S5, there’s a little flap that you had to open and close to maintain the IP67 rating. Constantly opening and closing it was a recipe to breaking it off, where wireless didn’t put that kind of wear in.
With my newer phone, it’s easier to keep the cable with a battery pack to charge when out and about, and charge wirelessly at home, since I generally don’t need it done with any great speed, and it saves having to buy/replace another cable, or forgetting to unpack and take it with me.
Qi charging is also pretty standard, which is also good if I have a few devices with different cable needs, but mutually support the same wireless charging standard, since I can put an iPhone and an android on the same pad, without having to swap cables back and forth.
I travel on the go often, wireless charging is too inefficient for me. I’d rather charge with my PD battery pack.
Another point, I use my PD pack to charge everything from my phone, drone, camera, to my laptop, ear buds.
Most of those don’t have a wireless charger so I just stick to wired PD charging.
When I sleep at my mom’s house, there’s a smart lamp my brother put in the spare room that has 1 USB port on it and a wireless charging pad. I opt to use the wireless charging pad at night for my phone and the USB for my watch. Makes it so I can charge two devices simultaneously without having to switch out USBs.
in a car, having wireless charging pad is nice for the convenience of taking it with you and putting it on very quickly and easily, especially if you’re actively driving and just want to do it with the least amount of distractions. Even with USB type C being reversible, you still need to make sure the cable gets in the hole and that’s dangerous to do while driving. But with a wireless pad, you don’t have to look and the magnet helps guide it on correctly for you. You still shouldn’t do this while driving, but out of the two, a vastly safer alternative. Besides that, it’s nicer to be able to just grab your phone and go when leaving the car and also easier when entering. Another addition is that a wireless charging pad takes the place of two accessories and combines them together. So you now have a mount and a charger in one instead of both being separate.
Hygienically speaking, it’s cleaner in that you don’t have to touch the charger. Best for public use like a coffee cafe. People are gross and I try my hardest not to have touch contact with stuff if I can help it. So to be able to drop my phone down without touching a cable a million other people have been touching helps with that too.
Even though I like it…I still want a port. A lot of cases don’t allow you to make direct contact to have wireless charging, so it’s not always an option. Also don’t always want to have my phone laying down, sometimes I want to use it while it’s charging, especially when typing, and that’s near impossible with 90% of charging pads unless it’s a special type of MagSafe for iPhones. Then there’s also the fact that I like it as an option in case something breaks. If the port is dirty or damaged, I still have the wireless charging option. Same in reverse if the wireless function ceases to work for some reason.
I think the public use one is the most legitimate reason I’ve read so far, I would definitely prefer a wireless charger if it were public but I’ve also never used any sort of public charger before
It’s also safer, because you’re not connecting something that might carry data to the USB port. Wireless charging cannot transmit data. USB can, so delivering a virus or something that way isn’t out of the question, where it would be harder to do that over wireless charging.
Don’t want to bother with a cable at night.
