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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Thanks. Also love your username
I’m actually really impressed because I’ve had a pixel 6 for over 2 years and the USB c port is doing great. But you’re right, I should probably get a simple wireless charger just to cut down on some of the plugging
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.
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.
Wired turbo chargers are bad as well. However, although I don’t know about iOS, Android lets you plan your charge cycle. That makes my phone take about 8 hours to charge while I’m asleep.
Or you could just not use a fast charger and not worry about that. Either way, you’re moving the goalpost. Not all phones support fast charging and not everyone has a fast charger. I’d wager most people charge their phones with lower power (15/20w more or less).
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.
On one hand, yes, your port can break at some point. On the other, why would you throw away the whole phone if the usb port can be replaced? Going even further, you could always use your usb port for charging until it breaks and after that you could start using wireless charging. For data transfer there are plenty of apps and ways to wirelessly transfer data so that wouldn’t be a problem either. At the end of the day, you’re barely using your usb port and you’re also wasting twice as much (or more) energy that you would if you used a wired charger.
Yep, convenience of plopping the phone down really is 100% of it for me. Especially with Apple’s magnets setup, it’s a one-hand, one-second operation, and then the phone is standing at attention on its cradle stand. The thought of having a dangling cable on my desk and picking it up and fiddling to plug it in then laying the phone flat seems like something from 10 years ago. I’ve even forgotten once or twice what kind of port my phone has.