So my phone is charged by a cable. It plugs into the wall on one side and then plugs into my phone on the other. This system works great - I plug my phone in when I go to bed and unplug it when I wake up. The cable is long enough to plug into my phone even if I want to use it in bed. It's easy, cheap and failproof.
What is the draw of wireless charging? What is it that I'm missing? Did anyone ask for this?
It takes something easy and makes it effortless. Like AirPods, this has a surprising number of implications that you really don't think about until you try it.
If I'm just setting my phone down on my desk and it's at 50%, and my cable is right there, I may not bother to plug it in. Especially if I might get up again in 5 or 10 minutes. But if I can just set it down in a particular place and regain a couple percentage points, and I do this twenty times a day, it adds up.
This is what I never understood, even slightly. Why not just give an iPod / iPhone dock without all the wireless bullshit? I prefer a dock as it holds phone at a handy angle, syncs, and doesn't have the myriad of drawbacks of bluetooth.
Smartphone battery life is so shit, on every model, that I always plug my phone in. Even if the cable / socket is only going to be around for minutes. So no saving here. In the days of docks, I dropped phone on dock every time I was at my desk.
My first few phone models (Motorola StarTAC etc) had a battery life in weeks, and I usually had a charger/dock with space for keeping the phone and a spare battery fully charged.
So from here it sounds like you've made a feature of going backwards at a rate of knots.
Your argument could equally apply to some kind of dock/cradle. With the added advantage of it being propped up into a better reading position, and the possibility of a wired data connection.
They never seem to have taken off though. My only guess is because it would only fit one phone/ trap a manufacturer into a form factor.
I can slap my phone down on the charger next to my bed in the dark. I can grab my phone off the charger on my desk at work with one hand. Before wireless charging, it wasn't much hassle, and I only rarely had trouble with my phone battery dying. Now it's almost no hassle, and I never have trouble with my battery dying. It's just a nice quality-of-life boost.
This made a lot (more) sense when even corded charging was kind of slow and meant that the use time to charge time was pretty bad; ~2 hours to charge: ~12 hours to use gives an optimistic 6 use/charge time ratio, but now that fast charging and USB-C power deliver devices can charge in ~30 minutes and last ~20 hours that gives a use/charge ratio of 40. Given that if I have to leave my phone on a wireless charger for much longer; I greatly increase the risk that I'm picking up an undercharged phone.
But like in your use case, it's a nice to have thing that provides standby charging and can prevent your phone from at least loosing power over the day. Honestly, I think the best solution would be a USB-C dock so that you would have the convienience of wireless with the fast speed (and PC connection potentionally) of a wired connection.
I have a quad lock desk mount with Qi charger attachment I use at my work desk. It's wonderful and fulfils a similar use case that you have specified here. I can quickly attach the phone and it's charging... often charging all day as I work. I also have a Qi Ikea charger next to it that is often used while I am doing other activities away from my desk. The Quad Lock desk mount is great for seeing notifications coming in, and the Ikea charger is handy if I need a quick top-up during the day and I'm in a rush and drop it in place.
I think the real point is the eventual removal of the port altogether.
If you can sync your phone over Wifi, stream to audio over Bluetooth, and reliably and quickly charge wirelessly, then you can remove the port altogether allowing for thinner, more robust, more water resistant designs. It's probably also cheaper to boot.
That's the wireless future that I imagine Apple was/maybe still is imagining.
In the present/short term, having a few spots in your home and office you can slap down whatever it is (phone+battery case, headphones, watch) whenever you don’t actively need to use it and just quickly pick them up when you need them. Even a few minutes charge can be handy.
In the medium term, the fact that it is portless and at this point, standardized, are features. Even a modicum of wear and tear can eat through ports (in both the phone and the power brick, but usually the phone) and cables (which is the common failure case if you travel with cables because you otherwise wouldn’t have one every place you need them). Anything that eliminates even a bit of wear and tear necessitating fewer repairs and replacements is a plus. Well the caveat here is I don’t know the failure states of Qi wireless charging pads yet, so there is possibly something I haven’t considered here.
In the long term: I would like a desk, where recessed into this desk is a a pad where I can place my phone, desktop, laptops on top of and have both power and a high speed LAN confined to that desk without the access point in the other room acting as the medium of exchange, and without having to plug every powered device individually into an outlet or cable to charge. This would massively cut down on RF interference, reduce the total number of cables I need to be concerned about, and make keeping the area around my desk clean a bit easier. I manage now, and it is fine, but I really dislike having to replace any cables in my current setup with another cable unless I’m reducing the number of cables, and I strongly dislike having to add to the number of cables in any space I maintain.
Might be a dream, but it is my dream. If all I cared about was keeping my phone charged, proximity charging wouldn’t be a selling point. When I factor in all the other infrastructure in my life I have to keep powered and charged and cabled, it is a much stronger sell.
Thank you for sharing this. I think this is a very good idea.
>I would like a desk [...] and have both power and a high speed LAN [...]
Based on what I've seen I think there is a huge (untapped) demand for desks like these in coworking spaces. The tough part in making something like this is actually the design. So you'll have to work with someone who is skilled in carpentry/ sketching and go through a few iterations before you can have a good product/ something to show prospects.
Like a self contained cubicle but essentially a workdesk. I like this idea very much. You should work on it.
Wireless charging’s nice to have at home— it’s pretty convenient to just be able to throw my phone on the charger at night and have it charged in the morning, without having to mess with a cable.
The real killer app for me, though, is wireless charging in the car. I’ve got a Qi charger built into my car (and Qi phone mounts are readily available as retrofits for cars that don’t) and it’s really handy (and likely safer) to be able to just throw my phone in the pad if I realize it’s low while driving rather than having to fumble around with a cable.
> and it’s really handy (and likely safer) to be able to just throw my phone in the pad if I realize it’s low while driving
Why are you doing anything with your phone, including ascertaining it's on a low charge, while driving? Plug your phone in at the start of your trip if it needs charging.
I was of the same opinion until I got a charging pad from Costco for Christmas. I decided to try it out to be polite, and was surprised at how much I like it. I don't have to fish for the cable, I don't have to try to plug it into the speakers a few times in the dark before finding the right port, and if I want to pick up my phone to check something really quick I can just do it without unplugging or having to hover near the cord. Life-changing, no, but certainly worth a few bucks to me.
Yeah I bought some wireless charger off amazon (I think it supports up to 10W, but you know how amazon is) just to try it out and haven’t stopped using it. I really thought it was going to be super gimmicky and that I was going to just keep using a cable.
Cables fall off the nightstand and slip into crevices of death. They get stolen to power a device in the kid’s room. They are hard to find in the dark. They have to be attached and detached. They can snag and knock a glass of wine all over the sheets. They are a choking hazard for your pet gecko.
Ok, I made that last one up.
I didn’t understand the appeal until I put one on my nightstand.
Now if my phone buzzes I can grab it, glance at it, and toss it back on the wireless charging stand.
My kids have T1D and I monitor their blood sugars on my phone. If they are too high or low I get an alert. Sometimes the sensors drop out, and I get an alert. If I wake up during the night I glance at their numbers. In short, there’s a lot of quick burst of phone use most nights, and I carry my phone into their rooms if I need to make a correction.
Not having to plug and unplug my phone every time I get up to check on them is a small miracle.
But for anyone, really, being able to just toss down and pick up the phone is a tiny little dopamine hit versus fidgeting with a cable.
Cables are subject to breaking (specifically the connectors) and given how hard it is for many phones to listen to music via headphones and charge at the same time, I can see the appeal. Also, jacks are only rated for a limited number of cycles (connects, disconnects) due to the fact that there is mechanical connection taking place.
In the future, I imagine wireless charging being built into key pieces of furniture (see Ikea's attempts) where you might like to charge your phone. At the makerspace I run, we are embedding wireless charging into our custom-built tables which, I have to say, is super nice just to drop your phone down and have it charge.
Wireless charging is not without costs. One of the costs is that coil heating the article talks about is not limited to the charger, the phone coil also heats up. And being usually stuck to the battery, the already stressed battery (by the charging) is also stressed by the additional coil heat - not good for the non-replaceable battery. I understand that phones (even $1000 ones) are disposable these days, but this makes them even more short-lived.
One factor is expansion into multiple devices. Right now that's Apple watch, AirPods, and iPhone. Maybe a few more future ones like beats isolating headphones (existing product that doesn't charge wirelessly), a keychain dingus, augmented reality glasses, chest strap sleep monitor, or a bike computer.
Apple would very much like to sell you more hardware every year. They are very well equipped to innovate here.
Pile all your gadgets on this mat is much easier than plug 3 things in every night. In the non tech world, people don't baby their gadgets. I know of a few non tech friends who just leave the apple watch at home if they forget to charge it (instead of hauling the charger to work). Do that enough and you start to wonder why you bought the Apple Watch and then you wonder if you should really buy the next one.
There are also lots of form factors where the space saving is key to product success. Apple Watch is the current one. But in the future... AR glasses look dorky if there's anything bigger than about 5mm cubed on them. A sleep monitoring headband or chest strap would be much better being very low profile. (You might put your apple watch on the nightstand and put on the chest strap every night.)
I have a Nexus 7 2013 whose USB jack no longer works (probably accumulated damage from bumps/drops/general stressors), but wireless charging still works fine.
(High-five ThatPlayer who posted at the same time)
The USB jack is always the first to fail for me too. Depending on where you live, you might be able to get it replaced. Where I am a USB jack replacement (parts and labour) is about USD 8 (and a replacement for a scratch screen (5 inch 720x1280 so nothing special) is about USD 15, both at a local electronics market.
I felt the same way until I bought my wife a wireless charger as something she might think was “neat”. I wasn’t even sure if she would use it but at least it would be an option. Once I saw how nice the experience actually was I bought one for myself. It’s really nice on the bed side table. Much nicer than fiddling with a cord in the dark. It wasn’t life changing but it definitely felt better than plugging in.
Convenience. I keep one on my desk. Everytime I sit down, I place my phone down on my charger pad, because that's where it goes. The 1 less step of having to hunt for a cable and plug it in makes it second nature to have my phone always charging or fully charged. Similarly in cars that have wireless charging nowadays, there's a tray of some sort to put it in.
Rather than charging when I need to, wireless charging makes it convenient enough to be charging all the time. Unless you have a lifestyle where you're out and about, and you don't have chargers everywhere you are, it's a nice addition.
Also less stress on the physical port. My Nexus 7 2013 has a broken microUSB port that I can still wirelessly charge.
"Everytime I sit down, I place my phone down on my charger pad, because that's where it goes."
I hope you enjoy destroying your battery prematurely, because constant charging cycles wears it out rapidly. Lithium chemistry hates that kind of treatment.
Have you ever tried fumbling with cables in the dark when going to bed? It’s not a huge thing, but wireless charging is a nice quality of life improvement. Try using it for a couple weeks and it will be hard to go back.
The other small benefit is less wear on the charge port. It’s not such an issue for usb-c or lightning ports, but micro usb ports have terrible reliability in my experience. All my android devices developed a broken micro usb port after a year or two of plugging it in over and over.
The wireless charger is a better experience than putting a cable in your phone in my opinion, but the dock they used to include in the box is a far better than both.
It was simple to put your phone in (as opposed to a cable that might fall off the table or move around), and kept the phone facing you making it easy to interact with while charging (unlike the wireless charger).
But at some point they probably figured out they could save 20 cents by selling it separately.
I think it just boils down to we all have subtle differences in how we use products so while some features are a revelation to one person, they are pointless to another (always on Siri on the AirPods or wireless charging on the AirPods is pointless for me, I'd have simply preferred longer battery life as an example).
Wireless charging is incrementally nicer based on how I use my phone. Would I be fine without it? Absolutely. But getting an extra 2 inches of legroom on a flight costs more than a wireless charging pad so the bar for incremental benefit is pretty low for me.
The small incremental benefit for me is that I often randomly wake up in the middle of the night with something on my mind, if I don't look it up, I won't get back to sleep. Reaching over and grabbing my phone off the nightstand with a cable means possibly knocking things off the stand if I leave it plugged in (I keep a glass of water there usually), if I unplug it then I have to find the plug and replug it in all while trying to not wake up too much. I'm also always anxious about the cable bending too much at the connector so I'm always guarding that carefully. If I get a high gauge cable so I don't worry about it bending too much, then it's even more prone to knocking things over and possibly just pulling the plug out of the wall. Stands aren't much better, when trying to get the phone back on the stand in the dark without getting up it takes both hands usually to try to line it up correctly. The pad is simple, the phone is on the corner of the nightstand, I grab it, look up whatever, drop it back.
As I mentioned it is definitely a small incremental convenience based on my particular use of the product. For less than the cost of economy plus on a single flight, I don't keep knocking crap off my nightstand. Seems worth it (for me). I've definitely paid more for less tangible benefit.
I agree totally. Not to mention that wireless charging uses about 40% more power. Which for charging phones is a small amount until you think of every person on the planet charging their phone every day.
> Which for charging phones is a small amount until you think of every person on the planet charging their phone every day.
It is a small amount of power though.
There are about 4.68 billion mobile phone users; let's assume each has one phone. Let's be conservative and assume that all these phones have high-end battery packs, on the order of 4,000 mAh. Let's be even more conservative and assume each phone is used to depletion and recharged each day. Let's assume a voltage of 4V, so we end up with 2.7e14 joules used recharging mobile phones per day. In 2014 (so conservative, for 2019), human civilization produced 23,816 terrawatt-hours of electricity, or about 8.6e19 joules per year or 2.6e17 joules per day. (Let's also assume electricity production and consumption are equal.) Even under this very conservative estimate, cell phones charging accounts for 0.115% of world electricity consumption. Increasing that figure by 40% is negligible.
There is a book called Personality Plus[1] that you should definitely read because you're most likely a very detailed oriented person. I have friends that are not as diligent as you are with plugging their phones in and their battery is almost dead all of the time. Them having a Qi charging mat is the one saving grace that no finally keeps their phones above the 5% - 20% low power mode battery area that they usually hover in. The cognitive load is just low enough to get them to charge their phones more often if they can just place it on a mat. I'm like you when it comes to charging my phone, but I know quite a few people that are not.
>What is the draw of wireless charging? What is it that I'm missing? Did anyone ask for this?
Apple is trying to release a series of devices that don't need wires. Apple Watch, Airpods, removing the 3.5mm headphone jack. They're trying to make a sheet of glass a few millimeters thick that does computations, like you'd see in Star Trek. There's no big mystery to it.
Nobody asked Apple to remove 3.5inch floppies or optical drives; people freaked the fuck out for months when they did. Now, nobody cares or needs those things. This is how Apple operates. People (myself included) seem to forget that they do this all the time on their path to making great products.
I have four of these: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01K702S66/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_z8UN... with little 2-inch micro USB and Lightning cables. I keep they in different sockets around the house. When I want to charge something I just pick it up and plug it in and fold the battery around the back. I can hold it in my hand or set it down on a desk. More wireless than wireless.
The thing that gives me pause is that we have spent two decades worrying about standby power, but now we are willfully adding an inefficiency. It feels like the wrong direction to be moving in.
A wired charger is a personal item. A charging mat can be a communal space--pads in restaurant tables, bars, and other community spaces. Charging everywhere.
What is the draw of wireless charging? What is it that I'm missing?
If you haven't figured it out and you're happy with a cable, stick with it. There is no greater disservice in life than relieving yourself from something you're happy and perfectly content with in search of something better. In the worst case you become acutely aware of the downsides of both methods and you're no longer happy with either.
With a cable, you have to put your phone in a place AND put something in a place in your phone.
With a mat, you only have to put your phone in a place.
Obviously the latter is life changing. ;)
Seriously, however marginal, it is arguably a gain, and ... marginal gains can be kindof nice if they don't force some other annoying tradeoff. For me that'd include an appreciable cost higher than the cost of a long-lasting cable, but YMMV.
I think wireless charging can be great for two reasons:
- hiding it visually, Ikea has done it very well. A cable is ugly, air power is ugly. but if your night table has wireless charging hiding, it is very pleasant to hide cables entirely in your bedroom.
- occasions where you want to be fast. at the office or when going to sleep you don't need to be fast. but in the car I think wireless charging is nice. If you travel frequently, being able to just drop your phone in your car and have navigation and wireless charging instantly is very nice in my opinion. Something like this:
https://www.amazon.com/iOttie-Wireless-Samsung-Enabled-Devic...
My mom suffered a stroke and has 70% use of only one side of her body. She's been known to take risky measures reaching for a fallen charging cable. For her, wireless charging would make her life safer (and me, less worried about her). But yeah, personally, I find this tech rather gimmicky.
So I used to think the same until one day I dramatically learned the utility of wireless charging.
I was traveling on a 30 hour journey with two airplane changes from Asia to the US. Some combination of temperature and humidity changes led to condensation in the charging port my phone basically refused to charge from USB C irrespective of what I tried to dry it out. I barely managed to save enough battery to send a "arrived safely" msg home and book an Uber to the hotel since I landed close to midnight. I could buy a cheap burner phone the next day but all data is on my regular phone. I luckily found a mobile store carrying a wireless charger and was able to get my phone going again.
It's happened a few more times and now I never travel without the wireless charger.
It really is a matter of convenience. Micro-USB is so annoying because of the dexterity needed to plug it in, lightning and USB C are much better because you don’t have to think about the orientation, wireless is better than that because you don’t have to attach any wires.
Connector wear and obstruction is real and can make charging or wired interaction extremely hard or even impossible. Connectors also have a lifetime.
For example, my phone's (Samsung Galaxy S6) port has dirt in it that I can't get out, some micro USB connectors wont fit and all of them don't stick in and readily fall out. This is one of the reasons I absolutely loathe and hate micro USB. It's just an extremely bad connector.
Compare this with my Surface Pro 3 (or the magnetic Mac chargers): the magnetic charger is wonderful and Just Works.
Wireless charging is the next step. Sure, you need the pad and it's not as readily movable but damn it's effortless.
Personally I'd prefer magnetic connectors, though.
The seconds it takes to plugging in and unplugging your phone add up and it takes mental effort. I’d rather just set the phone down on the nightstand or on the desk while drinking coffee and have it charge without whipping out the cable each time.
I thought it would be a nice improvement, just laying my phone down in a few common places I charged it, so I bought a charging pad to try it out. Physics got in the way, even with a simple "high speed" charger from Samsung, with a Samsung phone. It was the case on the phone. Probably no more than 2mm thick, but it made finding the right position to charge very difficult. If it wasn't just right, it wouldn't charge, and even when it did it was much slower than the normal high speed charging.
I think there's potential in this arena, but it's not quite there yet, not for a lot of people and every day situations.
Cables are not entirely fail-proof - I imagine many people here, including myself, have seen smoldering Apple branded mag-safe, 30 pin, and lightning cables. Moving energy from one place to another, quickly and efficiently, at the small-scale of modern electronics, is tough. I prefer cables for charging, too, but as others have posted wiredless-ness sure is convenient, a la AirPods. I swore by wired headphones until I got AirPods - now I never yank my EarPods out of my ear while cooking or if my dogs jump on me while I am on the phone (for example; small conveniences).
The charging port is now used for more applications, like plugging headphones. Using wireless charging helps to reduce the port's wear and tear that it must faces everyday.
The handiest place to have one, IME, is not at home but at work: you can leave it on the pad for most of the workday but always pick it up right when you need it and not have to worry about fiddling with the cable. Especially when the phone gets a couple years old and you need midday charges for it to last through the day.
It's not a vital feature, but since decent chargers are only like $25, why not?
There are more conveniences than just at home, e.g. in the car, you just place it in the place holder and it charges, no cables to fumble with. No multitude of connectors and there is also a portion of society that has trouble with keeping their hand steady to plug in small connectors - its accessibility for folks with disabilities.
The two benefits from the wireless charger: 1) you dont wear out the usb port 2) I have the charger next to my bed. You can pick a phone at night to check anything and put it back without looking for a cable - much less mental and eye strain when you're half asleep.
I got sick and tired of cables fraying and breaking and finding the cable after it falls off the top of my night stand. It’s also easier to put my phone on the charging pad in the dark than fumbling with finding the cable and getting it plugged in.
I have a tablet with a broken USB port, so I can only charge it wirelessly. For my phone, wireless charging makes it easier to top off the battery. Less friction than digging around for a cable, plugging it in, and unplugging when I'm done.
I have a waterproof case on my phone. My last two similar cases failed because the door to open the charging port broke. We're not very far off from phones that are waterproof because they don't have any ports at all.
It's very convenient in the car. Get in, drop the phone in the charging area and you're done, phone is now charging. Hell you can even use some apps through the infotainment system through carplay; it's great.
I love it for nightly charging. I can still easily grab my phone (for those mid-night ideas) while half asleep and not having to fiddle with a cable. Then plop it back down and go back to snoring.
One hand vs. two. Never have to look for the cable that fell behind the nightstand. Picking up the phone at night doesn't risk yanking something else off the nightstand with the cable.
For me the win would be being able to charge my phone, watch, and airpods all at once. This is way, way better than 3 cables (one of which is different).
Charging phone when you are off to bed is really very bad.
Lithium charging protection circuit could fail anytime due to one of the components in the circuit malfunctioning and your lithium battery inside the phone can catch fire.
Many houses have been burned down to ashes from lithium fire. Just YouTube for 'lithium fire' and you'll see how dangerous it can be.
I usually charge the phone in an empty place where lithium fire won't cause much damage.
residential lithium fires are unlikely to be coming from phones. (unless people still have those exploding Notes still kicking around)
Far more likely to be lithium batteries being used or abused in a hobbyist capacity. E-cigs and RC are both ripe for it when users have lower quality cells to begin with, routinely discharge them above the rated current and then charge with sometimes questionable chargers. Worse yet when people try to charge them above the max voltage.
What a shame, this would be the actual experience of wireless charging that I had envisioned it was. The reality of wireless charging is quite different: fiddly and possible to have your phone be dead in the morning.
I wish someone could figure out how to make a true wireless charging mat like this. As it stands, I wouldn’t buy a wireless charger for my wife for example. She’ll just plonk it on there and then ask me why her phone is dead in the morning.
Who cares about convenience when there is a non-zero chance of waking up to a dead phone?
I hope someone figures out how to make “true” wireless charging that just works so that there’s no more fiddling with positioning.
I think that’s why there is so much hate on AirPower, people say “who cares there are plenty on the market”. Yeah true, but not any that my wife would want to use. And I’m betting there are a lot of people like that out there.
I've had really good luck with the tilted stand ones. If my phone is propped up on it, it's charging. I have had much worse luck with the lay-down pad ones.
Yeah I've had problems with previous chargers but my Pixel Stand works great every time. The design makes it very easy to get it in the right spot and keeps it there.
My problem is it's really easy to get just barely on the edge of the charge zone, and then at some point in the night you bump it ever so slightly and it leaves the zone and stops charging.
I believe you may be conflating ability with willingness. I've seen many people seemingly wilfully avoid learning things of which they're clearly capable.
You'd have to intentionally position a phone to not work on the Samsung charger. Plus it tilts and looks a lot nicer than the apple version. People hated on the airpower because it is a crowded market with multiple mfgs already making superior ones.
Although why would the phone be dead in the morning anyways? Even on low battery it should still be on low battery in the morning.
> The FCC rules for wireless charging devices like AirPower are quite strict, and limit exposure to 20 cm (8 in) above the device to 50 mW/cm^2.
I'm surprised they waited till the end to do the testing. When I used to work on hardware products at smaller companies, some preliminary tests are done on early designs to make sure we have a comfortable margin. A company like Apple should have dedicated in-house facilities to do this earlier.
I'm quite sure they didn't "wait until the end" to do the testing. First, this article is iFixit's speculation. Second, they probably did something similar to what iFixit envisioned: they did test early and knew it didn't pass muster, but thought they could eventually engineer themselves a fix, until they finally just hit a brick wall (aka physics) and found it wasn't an issue they could overcome.
They probably knew they were close to the legal limit and their engineers probably said on a hunch "we can stay beneath the limit and retain adequate power with the right mix of tricks" and then just ended up being wrong on that hunch by a little bit.
That's why we have to bend them so often in real life with tricks. In media they can just make something up, we've got to find real solutions. I'm sure that one exists but it's either too expensive currently or not consistent enough yet. Yet being the key word there. I'm sure this will be an elegantly solved issue at some point, just might require some more smarts on the hardware side.
Could you put a pressure sensor on the pad and only power on the coils directly underneath the object? I assume with software you could selectively turn on/off areas of the mat to manage the heat problems that come with multiple coils being on at once. I could see it being a problem if they were charging all at the same time but you should be able to fake it and call that good enough. All the devices have to charge, but they don't have to all charge at once. I think you could get tunnel vision and forget that.
Could someone who is better qualified tell me why that wouldn't work?
There wouldn't be any need for pressure sensors; this already happens. The charged device adds some power to its own coil and the charging station detects that (it's unidirectional communication). For example my charging station lights up about a second after putting my phone down, and can show the battery status with the light. I would assume that when there's nothing on them the coils transmit in a low-power mode, with the protocol allowing the device to ask for more/less power as required (edit: Wikipedia confirms that the device can actually send some pretty precise instructions to the station, with voltage controllable in 50 mV increments [0]).
So logically it would seem the heat issue happens when there are three coils active at the same time transmitting at high power - the peak heat output is the issue.
What I don't follow is how other multi-charging mats do exactly this. According to the article, by their estimation it was powerful harmonic EM interference that did AirPower in. If AirPower were only powering 3 coils at a time like other multi-charging mats why did it run into this problem when others had not
>And that can be difficult—that can stop someone’s pacemaker
It was that very point that made me think: thank you Apple, you ARE doing some things right! With risks like that, I like that they pulled the plug and they didn't take chances.
The battery fiasco on the other hands, I still cannot forgive that.
I would love for this all to be one elaborate April Fool's joke and it becomes available on Monday.
On a more technical note, this was a bit surprising to read: "'No one looks at [Electro-Magnetic Interference] until the end.' The FCC rules for wireless charging devices like AirPower are quite strict, and limit exposure at 20 cm (8 in) above the device to 50 mW/cm^2."
Depending at which point was "the end" of the AirPower development cycle, Apple either spent many many months attempting to remedy the problem with small enough breakthroughs to keep the marketing parade going, or Apple discovered something severe last minute. The issues discussed in this article, I would think, were well enough known for some time--still making this a perplexing story.
Readit News
What is the draw of wireless charging? What is it that I'm missing? Did anyone ask for this?
If I'm just setting my phone down on my desk and it's at 50%, and my cable is right there, I may not bother to plug it in. Especially if I might get up again in 5 or 10 minutes. But if I can just set it down in a particular place and regain a couple percentage points, and I do this twenty times a day, it adds up.
Smartphone battery life is so shit, on every model, that I always plug my phone in. Even if the cable / socket is only going to be around for minutes. So no saving here. In the days of docks, I dropped phone on dock every time I was at my desk.
My first few phone models (Motorola StarTAC etc) had a battery life in weeks, and I usually had a charger/dock with space for keeping the phone and a spare battery fully charged.
So from here it sounds like you've made a feature of going backwards at a rate of knots.
They never seem to have taken off though. My only guess is because it would only fit one phone/ trap a manufacturer into a form factor.
So why not just plop it into a dock?
But like in your use case, it's a nice to have thing that provides standby charging and can prevent your phone from at least loosing power over the day. Honestly, I think the best solution would be a USB-C dock so that you would have the convienience of wireless with the fast speed (and PC connection potentionally) of a wired connection.
The last time I had any trouble doing that one-handed was in the era of proprietary inch-wide charge connectors.
If you can sync your phone over Wifi, stream to audio over Bluetooth, and reliably and quickly charge wirelessly, then you can remove the port altogether allowing for thinner, more robust, more water resistant designs. It's probably also cheaper to boot.
That's the wireless future that I imagine Apple was/maybe still is imagining.
-embedded camera into the screen
-embedded fingerprint sensor into the screen
-embedded speaker and micro into the screen
All of these also mean there wont be a top or bottom with the phone, it could be used in any direction.
Especially, having thinner designs is important to have thin foldable phones in the future.
In the medium term, the fact that it is portless and at this point, standardized, are features. Even a modicum of wear and tear can eat through ports (in both the phone and the power brick, but usually the phone) and cables (which is the common failure case if you travel with cables because you otherwise wouldn’t have one every place you need them). Anything that eliminates even a bit of wear and tear necessitating fewer repairs and replacements is a plus. Well the caveat here is I don’t know the failure states of Qi wireless charging pads yet, so there is possibly something I haven’t considered here.
In the long term: I would like a desk, where recessed into this desk is a a pad where I can place my phone, desktop, laptops on top of and have both power and a high speed LAN confined to that desk without the access point in the other room acting as the medium of exchange, and without having to plug every powered device individually into an outlet or cable to charge. This would massively cut down on RF interference, reduce the total number of cables I need to be concerned about, and make keeping the area around my desk clean a bit easier. I manage now, and it is fine, but I really dislike having to replace any cables in my current setup with another cable unless I’m reducing the number of cables, and I strongly dislike having to add to the number of cables in any space I maintain.
Might be a dream, but it is my dream. If all I cared about was keeping my phone charged, proximity charging wouldn’t be a selling point. When I factor in all the other infrastructure in my life I have to keep powered and charged and cabled, it is a much stronger sell.
>I would like a desk [...] and have both power and a high speed LAN [...]
Based on what I've seen I think there is a huge (untapped) demand for desks like these in coworking spaces. The tough part in making something like this is actually the design. So you'll have to work with someone who is skilled in carpentry/ sketching and go through a few iterations before you can have a good product/ something to show prospects.
Like a self contained cubicle but essentially a workdesk. I like this idea very much. You should work on it.
The real killer app for me, though, is wireless charging in the car. I’ve got a Qi charger built into my car (and Qi phone mounts are readily available as retrofits for cars that don’t) and it’s really handy (and likely safer) to be able to just throw my phone in the pad if I realize it’s low while driving rather than having to fumble around with a cable.
Why are you doing anything with your phone, including ascertaining it's on a low charge, while driving? Plug your phone in at the start of your trip if it needs charging.
Ok, I made that last one up.
I didn’t understand the appeal until I put one on my nightstand.
Now if my phone buzzes I can grab it, glance at it, and toss it back on the wireless charging stand.
My kids have T1D and I monitor their blood sugars on my phone. If they are too high or low I get an alert. Sometimes the sensors drop out, and I get an alert. If I wake up during the night I glance at their numbers. In short, there’s a lot of quick burst of phone use most nights, and I carry my phone into their rooms if I need to make a correction.
Not having to plug and unplug my phone every time I get up to check on them is a small miracle.
But for anyone, really, being able to just toss down and pick up the phone is a tiny little dopamine hit versus fidgeting with a cable.
In the future, I imagine wireless charging being built into key pieces of furniture (see Ikea's attempts) where you might like to charge your phone. At the makerspace I run, we are embedding wireless charging into our custom-built tables which, I have to say, is super nice just to drop your phone down and have it charge.
Apple cables are. Somehow I don't have this problem with other brands... ever.
Apple would very much like to sell you more hardware every year. They are very well equipped to innovate here.
Pile all your gadgets on this mat is much easier than plug 3 things in every night. In the non tech world, people don't baby their gadgets. I know of a few non tech friends who just leave the apple watch at home if they forget to charge it (instead of hauling the charger to work). Do that enough and you start to wonder why you bought the Apple Watch and then you wonder if you should really buy the next one.
There are also lots of form factors where the space saving is key to product success. Apple Watch is the current one. But in the future... AR glasses look dorky if there's anything bigger than about 5mm cubed on them. A sleep monitoring headband or chest strap would be much better being very low profile. (You might put your apple watch on the nightstand and put on the chest strap every night.)
(High-five ThatPlayer who posted at the same time)
Rather than charging when I need to, wireless charging makes it convenient enough to be charging all the time. Unless you have a lifestyle where you're out and about, and you don't have chargers everywhere you are, it's a nice addition.
Also less stress on the physical port. My Nexus 7 2013 has a broken microUSB port that I can still wirelessly charge.
I hope you enjoy destroying your battery prematurely, because constant charging cycles wears it out rapidly. Lithium chemistry hates that kind of treatment.
The other small benefit is less wear on the charge port. It’s not such an issue for usb-c or lightning ports, but micro usb ports have terrible reliability in my experience. All my android devices developed a broken micro usb port after a year or two of plugging it in over and over.
It was simple to put your phone in (as opposed to a cable that might fall off the table or move around), and kept the phone facing you making it easy to interact with while charging (unlike the wireless charger).
But at some point they probably figured out they could save 20 cents by selling it separately.
Wireless charging is incrementally nicer based on how I use my phone. Would I be fine without it? Absolutely. But getting an extra 2 inches of legroom on a flight costs more than a wireless charging pad so the bar for incremental benefit is pretty low for me.
The small incremental benefit for me is that I often randomly wake up in the middle of the night with something on my mind, if I don't look it up, I won't get back to sleep. Reaching over and grabbing my phone off the nightstand with a cable means possibly knocking things off the stand if I leave it plugged in (I keep a glass of water there usually), if I unplug it then I have to find the plug and replug it in all while trying to not wake up too much. I'm also always anxious about the cable bending too much at the connector so I'm always guarding that carefully. If I get a high gauge cable so I don't worry about it bending too much, then it's even more prone to knocking things over and possibly just pulling the plug out of the wall. Stands aren't much better, when trying to get the phone back on the stand in the dark without getting up it takes both hands usually to try to line it up correctly. The pad is simple, the phone is on the corner of the nightstand, I grab it, look up whatever, drop it back.
As I mentioned it is definitely a small incremental convenience based on my particular use of the product. For less than the cost of economy plus on a single flight, I don't keep knocking crap off my nightstand. Seems worth it (for me). I've definitely paid more for less tangible benefit.
It is a small amount of power though.
There are about 4.68 billion mobile phone users; let's assume each has one phone. Let's be conservative and assume that all these phones have high-end battery packs, on the order of 4,000 mAh. Let's be even more conservative and assume each phone is used to depletion and recharged each day. Let's assume a voltage of 4V, so we end up with 2.7e14 joules used recharging mobile phones per day. In 2014 (so conservative, for 2019), human civilization produced 23,816 terrawatt-hours of electricity, or about 8.6e19 joules per year or 2.6e17 joules per day. (Let's also assume electricity production and consumption are equal.) Even under this very conservative estimate, cell phones charging accounts for 0.115% of world electricity consumption. Increasing that figure by 40% is negligible.
[1] - https://www.amazon.com/Personality-Plus-Understand-Understan...
Apple is trying to release a series of devices that don't need wires. Apple Watch, Airpods, removing the 3.5mm headphone jack. They're trying to make a sheet of glass a few millimeters thick that does computations, like you'd see in Star Trek. There's no big mystery to it.
Nobody asked Apple to remove 3.5inch floppies or optical drives; people freaked the fuck out for months when they did. Now, nobody cares or needs those things. This is how Apple operates. People (myself included) seem to forget that they do this all the time on their path to making great products.
I have four of these: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01K702S66/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_z8UN... with little 2-inch micro USB and Lightning cables. I keep they in different sockets around the house. When I want to charge something I just pick it up and plug it in and fold the battery around the back. I can hold it in my hand or set it down on a desk. More wireless than wireless.
So for years I've been turning-off the chargers at bedtime.
Has this advice changed?
If you haven't figured it out and you're happy with a cable, stick with it. There is no greater disservice in life than relieving yourself from something you're happy and perfectly content with in search of something better. In the worst case you become acutely aware of the downsides of both methods and you're no longer happy with either.
With a mat, you only have to put your phone in a place.
Obviously the latter is life changing. ;)
Seriously, however marginal, it is arguably a gain, and ... marginal gains can be kindof nice if they don't force some other annoying tradeoff. For me that'd include an appreciable cost higher than the cost of a long-lasting cable, but YMMV.
- hiding it visually, Ikea has done it very well. A cable is ugly, air power is ugly. but if your night table has wireless charging hiding, it is very pleasant to hide cables entirely in your bedroom.
- occasions where you want to be fast. at the office or when going to sleep you don't need to be fast. but in the car I think wireless charging is nice. If you travel frequently, being able to just drop your phone in your car and have navigation and wireless charging instantly is very nice in my opinion. Something like this: https://www.amazon.com/iOttie-Wireless-Samsung-Enabled-Devic...
I was traveling on a 30 hour journey with two airplane changes from Asia to the US. Some combination of temperature and humidity changes led to condensation in the charging port my phone basically refused to charge from USB C irrespective of what I tried to dry it out. I barely managed to save enough battery to send a "arrived safely" msg home and book an Uber to the hotel since I landed close to midnight. I could buy a cheap burner phone the next day but all data is on my regular phone. I luckily found a mobile store carrying a wireless charger and was able to get my phone going again.
It's happened a few more times and now I never travel without the wireless charger.
For example, my phone's (Samsung Galaxy S6) port has dirt in it that I can't get out, some micro USB connectors wont fit and all of them don't stick in and readily fall out. This is one of the reasons I absolutely loathe and hate micro USB. It's just an extremely bad connector.
Compare this with my Surface Pro 3 (or the magnetic Mac chargers): the magnetic charger is wonderful and Just Works.
Wireless charging is the next step. Sure, you need the pad and it's not as readily movable but damn it's effortless.
Personally I'd prefer magnetic connectors, though.
I think there's potential in this arena, but it's not quite there yet, not for a lot of people and every day situations.
I’ve seen cracked plastic around the end of the cable, but never burning.
No day in, day out strain on the charing port of the device?
No having to plug in/out, just put it down on the mat?
It's not a vital feature, but since decent chargers are only like $25, why not?
Wireless charging is the future.
Nice to know my port gets less wear!
(Also, both iPhone and Android support Qi. Don't need to play the different cable game.)
Dead Comment
Lithium charging protection circuit could fail anytime due to one of the components in the circuit malfunctioning and your lithium battery inside the phone can catch fire.
Many houses have been burned down to ashes from lithium fire. Just YouTube for 'lithium fire' and you'll see how dangerous it can be.
I usually charge the phone in an empty place where lithium fire won't cause much damage.
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Far more likely to be lithium batteries being used or abused in a hobbyist capacity. E-cigs and RC are both ripe for it when users have lower quality cells to begin with, routinely discharge them above the rated current and then charge with sometimes questionable chargers. Worse yet when people try to charge them above the max voltage.
I wish someone could figure out how to make a true wireless charging mat like this. As it stands, I wouldn’t buy a wireless charger for my wife for example. She’ll just plonk it on there and then ask me why her phone is dead in the morning.
Who cares about convenience when there is a non-zero chance of waking up to a dead phone?
I hope someone figures out how to make “true” wireless charging that just works so that there’s no more fiddling with positioning.
I think that’s why there is so much hate on AirPower, people say “who cares there are plenty on the market”. Yeah true, but not any that my wife would want to use. And I’m betting there are a lot of people like that out there.
I'm sure you're most likely underestimating your wife's ability to learn what is, in reality, a quite simple task.
(Modification of Murphy's Law.)
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Although why would the phone be dead in the morning anyways? Even on low battery it should still be on low battery in the morning.
I'm surprised they waited till the end to do the testing. When I used to work on hardware products at smaller companies, some preliminary tests are done on early designs to make sure we have a comfortable margin. A company like Apple should have dedicated in-house facilities to do this earlier.
I would think it more likely that they thought they could change FCC regulation via lobbying efforts in time for release.
The laws of physics are very unforgiving.
Could someone who is better qualified tell me why that wouldn't work?
So logically it would seem the heat issue happens when there are three coils active at the same time transmitting at high power - the peak heat output is the issue.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qi_(standard)
So, they have a working product, but once they had a better idea of the numbers they killed it, hence the late stage cancelation.
It was that very point that made me think: thank you Apple, you ARE doing some things right! With risks like that, I like that they pulled the plug and they didn't take chances.
The battery fiasco on the other hands, I still cannot forgive that.
On a more technical note, this was a bit surprising to read: "'No one looks at [Electro-Magnetic Interference] until the end.' The FCC rules for wireless charging devices like AirPower are quite strict, and limit exposure at 20 cm (8 in) above the device to 50 mW/cm^2."
Depending at which point was "the end" of the AirPower development cycle, Apple either spent many many months attempting to remedy the problem with small enough breakthroughs to keep the marketing parade going, or Apple discovered something severe last minute. The issues discussed in this article, I would think, were well enough known for some time--still making this a perplexing story.