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.
Many people are not like you. I personally don’t plug in at my desk even though a cable is there, as it’s one more thing to do. It’s also then tethered, meaning I have an extra step if I want to walk away and bring my phone with me. It’s also tethered meaning I have a loose cable now dangling in my way, which aside from functional issues is also ugly to look at.
I know many who almost never charge their phones, essentially always living at 5%.
Having a clean looking mat that’s permanently located where I can throw my phone on, without regard to position or orientation, would be awesome.
Yep, and curiously enough it is exactly the way cordless phones have been designed for years.
For someone "on the move" the dock or the wireless chargers are equally unsuitable, for those (most of users I believe) that simply plugin their (smart)phone placing it on their night table when they go to sleep they are pretty much the same, the "you can lay it down in every orientation" doesn't seem to me such a needed feature.
You can’t use the phone while it’s in the dock, and putting it in and taking it out is actually quite annoying. I’ve had several docks in the past, I wouldn’t go back.
I had a dock and replaced it with wireless charger as soon as they were available. The ease of just placing your phone on a surface vs. lining up your phone with the dock is well worth it.
The two Qi chargers I've used don't really require much lining up. With the Pixel Stand the alignment is obvious, I've never missed the alignment on that. I also have used Samsung's round, flat charger. Its a circle. Its hard to miss the center of the circle.
The Qi wireless charger for my Galaxy S5 has a noticeable precision requirement for placing the phone - it doesn't charge at full speed unless the phone is accurately placed, which is infuriating and makes me cut back my use of wireless charging; I've confirmed this by having a USB power meter attached and watching the current draw change as I move the phone around the pad.
Your buying Apple. Price as an argument is long gone.
This whole thread is really asinine.
Wireless charging is a seamless, elegant solution to a problem.
It is not the only solution.
It is not a perfect solution.
It is not the cheapest solution.
It is not the most cost effective solution.
It is likely not the best solution for your battery life.
Docks and wires are not an elegant solution.
That's all the argument is.
One is old, painful and requires though, the other, does not.
It doesn't need to be a perfect argument, you don't have to buy into it. But unless you've tried it, please keep your opinions to yourself, because there is unlikely a chance you'll really "get it" and your single sided perspective is really not that useful.
MagSafe was in the sweet spot IMO. Doesn't require too much alignment, symmetrical pinout, disconnects quickly and safely, low mechanical wear from use.
I've taken to buying magnetic USB cables for this reason. Plug a connector into the bottom of phone/tablet, put a cable at work, in car, and next to the bed, and it's super easy to connect and disconnect, with no worry that the Micro-B connection is getting bent (with cats and a child we've gone through way more USB Micro-B cables than I would have expected).
I can see one significant improvement for the wireless mats. The number one part of my phone to fail first has always been the charging port. The mat reduced the wear and tear on that port which could extend the life of my phone.
Isn’t this bad for the battery? ISTR you want to keep the battery between 20 and 80 percent. More than that and it winds up heating up the battery during charge. Or is that just for electric cars?
That was the case, I think, with old NiCd batteries, but with lithium ion batteries, you maximize battery longevity by keeping it mostly charged, I read recently.
Not really, that’s still the sweetspot for most lithium batteries as well (being under 20% is much more critical than being over 80% though).
What’s different between them is battery memory effect. With NiCd & NiMH you are supposed to let it discharge until 20%, then continuously charge up, and then repeat.
With Lithium based batteries it’s a recommended practice to charge in short bursts and keep the battery at a medium level.
In any case, most devices now a days will manage the battery in ways that you should not really bother. It’s amazing the conplexity that battery systems have nowadays.
That's called (mild) OCD and ordinary people don't suffer from it. Don't feel bad, I do the same, it seems to be a common trait in IT (anyone writing code kind of has to have it...).
If I don't keep my phone at 100% while at my desk, and then I go out somewhere after work, there's a chance my phone will run down to 0% while I'm out, potentially stranding me somewhere.
I don't think that's OCD. It's just planning ahead.
If I'm in an area with good connectivity I can easily last two days with my OnePlus. On the move, though, or in bad signal areas, and 20 hours might be the limit.
I used to live life at the edge and only charge my phone at 1%. Then a relative had a medical emergency and I had to stay at the hospital for hours, and my phone lost power so i couldnt call anyone. Now I always try to keep it fully charged. So no this is definitely not OCD.
People with OCD still learn from their own and other people's mistakes and adapt their own behavior.
It's not the learning part that's important, it's how one applies what they learned, and the way they act on what they fear might happen that can fall into OCD.
An obsession with being always 100% charged when you leave the house, immediately plugging to charge etc, always checking to make sure, etc, can point to OCD, even if it "makes sense" (e.g. to avoid being ever stuck without charge in an emergency).
I'm still annoyed that Apple made an excellent dock connector, it became widespread especially in hotels, it was ideal for use with external speakers, and then killed it off.
You mean the (IMO) inferior 30-pin? In order to make the phone smaller, they had to ditch it. Also, they were running out of unused pins to assign to new functions
> Smartphone battery life is so shit, on every model, that I always plug my phone in.
Buy a better phone next time. I'm currently using a Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 which lasts about 5-6 days on a single charge (10-15 hours of screen-on time), before that I used (and still use when doing 'dangerous' work) a Motorola Defy which lasted almost as long on a single charge. Neither of these phones were the newest or thinnest when I bought them, both of them have a relatively large battery (4000 mAh in the Xiaomi, 1750 mAh in the (> 8 years old) Motorola). Neither phone had the fastest SoC when they were launched.
I also removed all bloat from the devices before using them, either by swapping the default Android distribution for an alternative of by disabling/removing unwanted packages. This alone adds a day or two to the longevity.
I don't use Apple products, but I do use a wireless charger for my Samsung phone. The reason is that I keep it in a rather beefy protector case and fiddling with the charging port flap is annoying, which would also impede it working with any kind of dock, and I'm not about to carry a naked phone - I can't trust myself not to drop it.
The one distinct advantage of wireless charging is that my Galaxy S5 has the same waterproofing flap over the USB port, and I've already worn through one of these (thankfully Samsung had the foresight to make them very easy to replace when the clip breaks), so the charger does not require opening the flap.
With the angle it sits at, when notifications come in FaceID will correctly ID me and unlock the device so I can at a glance see what the notification is.
As for syncing? All of that is done to the cloud, so that's not really something I care much about.
Quite - why complexify and lower the charge efficiency it by making it wireless to hold it in exactly the same position as dock?
A perfect example - to my mind - of where a dock would be better, and probably cheaper.
As far as cloud goes, I realise I'm an outlier - perhaps not so much on HN - but I want local copies and start by mistrusting cloud unless I have adequate redundancy. So iPhone gets locally backed up still. Can't see that changing soon, wireless or no. :)
All docks I’ve seen require careful insertion of the phone, to a) hit the spot where the cable goes in and b) not to scratch the phone if I miss. Wireless: just slam the phone on the puck (or stand), carelessly.
maybe you use your phone agressively, but consider picking a phone with a good battery.
In my light use situation, my MotoG4 has aprox 2 days of battery. Under heavy use I can expect at least 12 hours. Add a phone compatible "rapid charger" and you can expect full charge in less than an hour.
My wife on the other hand, has a new Huaweii and it's battery lasts about 8 hours with moderate use. Not a phone I would consider, but she bought it for the fancy camera.
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.
The difference is with a sock I need to consciously put it in and take it out. Getting a text message with the phone at an angle so I can read it doesn’t matter to me because I still need to pick it up and carefully line it back down to respond.
Yes it takes less than a second but you know what’s even more effortless? A wireless charging mat that I can just set my phone onto.
If we are splitting hairs over 'a second' and 'effortless' (when effortless still means you've got to make sure it's nicely lined up, if we're talking about actual products here), then surely some kind of in trouser charger is even better. Why should I spend seconds rifling through my pocket, to find my phone to charge it?
With a dock you can see if the message is even worth responding to. I don't need to respond to that text from my bank, and I don't have to waste multiple seconds picking my phone up to discover that.
A charging mat goes on a flat surface that ends up attracting clutter. A dock with phone in doesn't, so when my phone does beep, I don't have to go rifling under paperwork to find it.
So to me a charging mat doesn't seem like the obvious slam dunk you seem to think it is.
You know they make wireless chargers in angled form factors, right? Here's one I used to use when I had a Qi compatible Samsung. Also you don't have to do any aligning. If the phone is not falling out of the charger, then it's in the sweet spot.
I can’t use it on a wireless charger. That kills the only use case where I might actually need to charge the device during the day. Playing movies while sick.
Any point where I can’t just charge at night in normal useage means a larger battery is going to win over easier charging.
i've found what I believe to be the heat generated by wireless chargers to have a negative effect on my battery longevity. Personally, I avoid them now after being a huge advocate from them. The reality is, Battery life on phones have improved to the point that I also rarely need to charge my phone anymore other than what I'm about to go to sleep anyway.
» The reality is, Battery life on phones have improved to the point that I also rarely need to charge my phone anymore other than what I'm about to go to sleep anyway.
On the Android side, batteries have gotten bigger with phones but more importantly the OS is getting better at battery management. With lineage 16 (Android pie), I can choose to enable battery saver at 75% battery.
I'm still on a Nexus 6. What has changed in battery technology recently?
I have no idea. I imagine most of the improvements in battery life stem from them being able to fit larger batteries in smaller packages along with hardware and software optimizations as well as improvements in cell reception. It could also be my usage. I listen to a lot of music during the day and perhaps the larger batteries are just able to accommodate me longer than the smaller ones.
I loved my Nexus 6 but I doubt I could still be using it still today so I am impressed. Can I ask what your reasons are for not having upgraded it? I generally upgrade my phones bc of the battery but this time I hope to just get it swapped out in a year or two.
» I loved my Nexus 6 but I doubt I could still be using it still today so I am impressed. Can I ask what your reasons are for not having upgraded it? I generally upgrade my phones bc of the battery but this time I hope to just get it swapped out in a year or two.
My main excuse is I got it a year after it was launched on a black Friday sake so I want it to last one more year.
On top of that I got to use a Samsung Galaxy s7e for almost a year in 2017.
Mainly, it was probably that I didn't want to spend the money. I can make the excuse that I an saving money toward a new desktop computer but I've been giving myself that excuse since before ryzen launched so I know it is just an excuse in telling myself.
My main use apps at the moment k9 mail, Google voice, slide for Reddit, and Mozilla Firefox. The camera on the Nexus 6 is horrible for current year. Perhaps I'll finally get a new phone this year. Perhaps if xiaomi releases the poco phone F2? 4Ah battery sounds nice.
Not sure on the camera or rest of the specs, but the moto G7 power is pretty cheap I think and has a 5Ah battery. Haven't got around to reading reviews since it launched the other month.
I would not consider "enabling battery saver" as the OS getting better. I would if it battery saver was by default on, at which point it's not a "battery saver" mode, it's just normal mode.
Yes, this is a reason I avoided wireless as well, but Samsung have a wireless charger with a fan in it which pumps the heat out. I've used it over a year and never felt my phone even being warm when charging.
It's not the heat, it's the increased use. when you're hardwired, you get enough power that your phone just bypasses the battery. If you use a charging mat, you still 'run' from battery. This means increased cycles which reduces battery life.
If the battery is charging then logically there must be enough residual power to run the phone.
If there wasn’t then the battery would not charge at all unless you turned off the phone first, but it obviously does.
Also a phone on a charging mat cannot easily be used and the screen will be off most of the time lowering power requirements.
The things that kill smartphone batteries today are age and power cycles. It doesn’t matter if you charge from 0% to 100% in one go or from 90% to 100% ten times. Both add up to one power cycle.
To keep your battery fresh for as long as possible, always keep the phone connected to a charger. No battery cycles. It will get worse after a few years anyway.
> It doesn’t matter if you charge from 0% to 100% in one go or from 90% to 100% ten times.
This isn't really true, as far as I know. If you avoid fully charging or deeply discharging a lithium-ion battery, the wear per unit of energy extracted is smaller.
There are some statistics quoted here (https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_l...) showing that if you, say, halve the amount of energy you retrieve from a battery in each cycle, the battery lasts for more than twice as many cycles.
Also, I want to add that what I wrote above is only regarding smartphones. I don’t know how much stress/extra heat etc that EV batteries are subject to, but I imagine they drain/charge at more intense rates relatively.
The sole reason I rooted my pixel 2 was to install a simple app which disables charging when I reach 80%. I get all the wins of not killing the battery by constantly saturating it, together with being able to leave it plugged in whenever I am at at my desk.
I so wish manufacturers would offer this option, for those primarily deskbound who do not relish ungluing their battery after a year
I think it is a built in (but configurable) option on newer Sony models.
Edit: they call it Qnovo Adaptive Charging and they get another minus from me [0] for making it impossible to select text on tye page by long-pressing it.
[0]: they got a huge minus from me back when they added "sponsored links" to my flagship Z3 or what it was.
Age, cycles and heat. Inductive charging loops are going to generate a ton of waste heat, and worse yet a good chunk of that is going to be coming from the coil inside the phone.
Yeah, but a battery gets hot when charging fast. Keeping it connected at 100%, the phone stays cool in my experience. And charging often makes the window where it generates heat from charging smaller
The act of charging the battery does itself generate some heat, as does the charging circuitry within the phone. This will happen with either method of charging. Wireless inductive charging will also generate significantly larger amounts of waste heat.
Fundamentally, wireless charging is less efficient. Theoretically you could be putting 16w of heat into the phone but only getting 8w of charging.
EV batteries cost $5000+ to replace and are expected to last 7-10 years, maybe more if you push it. And they are a huge pain to recharge in the middle of the day if you suddenly need to. How many years do you plan to keep your phone for? Who cares if the battery only has 70% of original capacity after 3 years and on some days you need to find 20minutess in the middle of the day to leave it plugged in to recharge?
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.