Induction Phone Charger

Or... it could be that induction charging is much slower than wired charging.

Or... it could be that they're waiting for a clear winner in the technolgy. Qi or Powermat/A4WP

Or... ?

I can imagine the threads now "I put my Galaxy on the inductive charger, floored my P90DL and the phone stopped charging. I'm going to sue Tesla!"

As a side note, you can wireless charge the new Samsung phones fully in less than 90 minutes.

Vince Cobelo said:

Slow charging is better than no charging.

Qi or Powermat...wait on a standard? Samsung has both technologies built into the Galaxy line. idk...Starbucks, airports and a heck of a lot of places haven't waited for a clear winner and the pad is so cheap why not.

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I have no idea what market pen is for wireless charging on phones, but anecdotally is seems like a minority case. Split by technologies, I'm sure it's even worse.

I like the idea, but haven't lived with the reality anywhere but my Apple Watch, where it is fine, but not something I could use with a phone in a case...

I think wireless charging is similar to how people feel about EVs. Most here say that once you've driven an EV, you never want to go back to ICE. Of course those that have only ever driven ICE might not see the benefit...but once you've tried it, it's so convenient.

I've had wireless charging for nearly three years now and I don't think I'll ever go back to plugging in my devices. It's so nice to be able to pick up my phone or tablet in the middle of the night and set it back down on the charger if it needs a charge. There's never a need to hunt for cables. There are even portable battery packs which support wireless charging. I even have a wireless/magnetic/sticky charger for my car which allows me to just set my phone on it, mounting it and charging it instantly.

Supposedly they have agreed to a unified standard. I'm sure if Apple ever added it natively, everyone would think it's the greatest thing ever. Maybe some day...

MorrisonHiker said:

I think wireless charging is similar to how people feel about EVs. Most here say that once you've driven an EV, you never want to go back to ICE. Of course those that have only ever driven ICE might not see the benefit...but once you've tried it, it's so convenient.

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I'm rather tired of buying replacement device cables myself (they seems to have a problem with the insulation breaking near the junction between the cable and the plug). The main difference between wireless charging of a device and wireless charging of a car is the amount of electricity you lose. In a device it's small, in a car its very large.

MorrisonHiker said:

I think wireless charging is similar to how people feel about EVs. Most here say that once you've driven an EV, you never want to go back to ICE. Of course those that have only ever driven ICE might not see the benefit...but once you've tried it, it's so convenient.

I've had wireless charging for nearly three years now and I don't think I'll ever go back to plugging in my devices. It's so nice to be able to pick up my phone or tablet in the middle of the night and set it back down on the charger if it needs a charge. There's never a need to hunt for cables. There are even portable battery packs which support wireless charging. I even have a wireless/magnetic/sticky charger for my car which allows me to just set my phone on it, mounting it and charging it instantly.

Supposedly they have agreed to a unified standard. I'm sure if Apple ever added it natively, everyone would think it's the greatest thing ever. Maybe some day...

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It doesn't really save hunting for cables. Each wireless charger is just in place of a cable. E.g. I have a charger by my bed, I have a charger with a cable in my car, I have a cable in my work computer and I have a cable by me at home. If I wanted to be able to charge wirelessly in those locations, I'd need a wireless charger in each location.

But for now, I normally plug in my charger that's by my bed at night.

Similarly, a single wireless charging standard is like having a single charging port standard.

Wireless charging's value proposition is simply to save time each time you want to charge your phone. When cost and charging speed are good enough, it'll be widely adopted and become really popular.

I just put them in the car myself - in the cubby, and we have iPhones with inductive case. The black one is in S60, the white one (magnetic) is in the P85D so the phone doesn't run away when I take off

MorrisonHiker said:

There are even portable battery packs which support wireless charging.

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That's pretty interesting, actually. As of about a year or so ago, both Qi and Powermat were substantially inefficient (compared to direct cable connections). In a portable battery scenario, wasting power kind of defeats the purpose. Have the protocols improved that much, or is the battery just that much bigger/heavier to account for the wireless losses?

MorrisonHiker said:

I think wireless charging is similar to how people feel about EVs. Most here say that once you've driven an EV, you never want to go back to ICE. Of course those that have only ever driven ICE might not see the benefit...but once you've tried it, it's so convenient.

I've had wireless charging for nearly three years now and I don't think I'll ever go back to plugging in my devices. It's so nice to be able to pick up my phone or tablet in the middle of the night and set it back down on the charger if it needs a charge. There's never a need to hunt for cables. There are even portable battery packs which support wireless charging. I even have a wireless/magnetic/sticky charger for my car which allows me to just set my phone on it, mounting it and charging it instantly.

Supposedly they have agreed to a unified standard. I'm sure if Apple ever added it natively, everyone would think it's the greatest thing ever. Maybe some day...

Click to expand...

I have been a wireless charging advocate for a few years now. I've gone on diatribes about the lack of wireless charging capabilities of a number of phones. I was totally on board... until I got a phone with USB-C. The wireless charging simply doesn't have enough current to charge a modern phone, so using a modern phone while wirelessly charging leads to slow battery drain, which is a pain... but I was willing to suffer that for the convenience. However, now that I have a phone with USB-C, the convenience factor of wireless charging is much less. It's still there, of course, but given that I can pull 15W over USB-C and less than 3W over wireless, it's kind of a no brainer. Couple that with the fact that 80% of the input power for wireless charging is wasted and I'm not such a fan anymore.

I was amazed at how much difference reversible connector made in terms of how much hate I had for USB Micro connectors. Now that the USB connector is reversible and also a lot more durable, I don't mind plugging/unplugging my phone much any more. The whole world needs to go USB-C and get rid of the current USB crap standards. They finally got it right with USB-C.

My wife and I both had Palm Pres which had wireless induction charging. It was really nice. The "Touchstones" were magnetic and held the devices in portrait or landscape mode. I did a really quick mod once and made a simple car charger by cutting the bottom off of a plastic cup, taping the Touchstone into it and then sticking the whole thing into a cupholder in our center console. We also had a cool app on the Pre which would trigger certain things if certain conditions were met. So, if the Pre detected it was on the Touchstone, and bluetooth connected to our car, it would immediately open the music player, turn on the GPS (which was normally off for battery consumption savings), and turn off Wi-Fi.

I also had Touchstones at home and at the office, with different app settings for each location. At home, the phone would stay dark and notifications would be silenced (primarily charging overnight). At the office, the phone's display would show the time, emails and texts as they arrived, and any news alerts I wanted. On the go, the phone would configure itself for battery consumption efficiency. And all of this was switched automatically.

Man, those phones were great...

We've been using wireless induction charging for a few years now and I will never go back to fiddling with plugs. It's so easy to just set your phone on the charging pad and not have to fiddle with a connector. It's easy to set down and pick up. I've put two charging pads in the center console (for my phone and my wife's phone). We just set the phones down and they are readily available without worrying about wires. We'll never go back to plugging in charging cables.
I don't know if a built-in charger would be a good idea since it the manufacturer might not put the charger where you want the phone. The chargers are small and easy to position where you want them. They are small and inexpensive. I also have them scattered in locations around my home and office.
Here's a photo of a few chargers where we usually keep them in our center console.

Vince Cobelo said:

You are right they might not put the charger where you want to put the phone but at least the wires running all over the place would be eliminated (I hate visible wires).

And who's to say the entire bowling alley couldn't be a induction charger. If Apple is going to eliminate the mic port the rest will soon follow. If apple eliminates the USB the rest will follow just like they did integrating induction charging capabilities.

It will happen eventually.

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I need to clean up the wire routing... Perhaps a sleve or cover.
I didn't think Apple had inductive charging.

jerry33 said:

I'm rather tired of buying replacement device cables myself (they seems to have a problem with the insulation breaking near the junction between the cable and the plug). The main difference between wireless charging of a device and wireless charging of a car is the amount of electricity you lose. In a device it's small, in a car its very large.

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I think you misunderstood the point being discussed.