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My experience is that there already is a universal charger that works with almost all phones made in the past couple years. That is a Qi inductive charging plat

My experience is that there already is a universal charger that works with almost all phones made in the past couple years. That is a Qi inductive charging plate. I suspect Apple will be ditching the lightning cable fairly soon, and will be replacing it with wireless charging as the only charging solution. I currently have a snazzy Qi mount in my car that works great, and a plate by my bed. The only downside is if I want to watch a video whilst charging or similar, it’s nearly impossible to do that with current plates/docks. These chargers work with my phone (iPhone 8) and my partner’s phone (Samsung), and I couldn’t be happier with them.

qsymmachus 7y ago
That's a good point, but I think it would be a shame if wireless charging completely replaced wired, because it's much less efficient. Something like 20-40% of input energy is wasted when using wireless charging versus a wire. If every existing phone switched to wireless charging, that would cause a non-trivial increase in total power usage.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  Perhaps an acceptable trade off for the substantial reduction in e-waste. You can always generate more clean power.
- kickling 7y ago
  Not saying it's entirely unrelevant, but when looking at energy consumption by production and by usage of smartphones, the usage basically consumes no energy at all (https://imgur.com/VHpJ5et https://imgur.com/VHpJ5et). That is probably because batteries can hold a very limited amount of energy and therefore mobile software is developed to use very little electricity. But on the other hand, less energy efficient chargers wont help this. I just mean it's not the big problem about our smartphones energy consumption.
  - kickling 7y ago
    Sorry, meant co2 emissions, not energy use.
    - marta_morena 7y ago
      Ahh because these two are decoupled. I am sure smartphone usage contributes a significant portion to CO2 then.
  - dotancohen 7y ago
    > therefore mobile software is developed to > use very little electricity. I see that you're _not_ in the mobile dev industry! Power consumption is the type of thing that is talked about in prerelease mobile software, and removed from the bullet points during release. Nobody optimizes for power consumption at the expense of features, bugs, or developer time.
Yetanfou 7y ago
Wireless charging does not work with the majority of devices produced worldwide. It might work with 'flagship' devices and maybe with some devices in the tier under it but it doesn't with the rest.
happytoexplain 7y ago
Sometimes I need to use my phone while it's charging.
AWildC182 7y ago
Qi generates excess heat which degrades the batteries glued in to smart phones, thereby increasing e-waste.
mattlondon 7y ago
Years and years ago when qi was available on the Google Nexus phones the wireless charging was pretty annoyingly over-sensitive to alignment. E.g. you put the phone down but it was 0.5mm too far to the left or 1 degree rotated wrong and it would not charge, meaning you'd wake up in the morning and the battery was flat. Often the phone vibrating knocked it out of alignment even if you got it right the first time. So instead of just plugging the phone in, you had to delicately place the phone in just-the-right-place - repeat 4 or 5 times before you got it right etc. Good riddance frankly - it was a shit user experience. I think the high-priced OEM docks relied on really strong magnets to force alignment. Has it got better yet?
utahcon 7y ago
I wouldn't be at all surprised to see Apple build in some sort of not-Qi charging in future phones. Really surprised they didn't do that to begin with TBH. Where the NFC has to read a compliant Apple chip to allow charging.

qsymmachus 7y ago

That's a good point, but I think it would be a shame if wireless charging completely replaced wired, because it's much less efficient. Something like 20-40% of input energy is wasted when using wireless charging versus a wire. If every existing phone switched to wireless charging, that would cause a non-trivial increase in total power usage.

toomuchtodo 7y ago
Perhaps an acceptable trade off for the substantial reduction in e-waste. You can always generate more clean power.
kickling 7y ago
Not saying it's entirely unrelevant, but when looking at energy consumption by production and by usage of smartphones, the usage basically consumes no energy at all (https://imgur.com/VHpJ5et https://imgur.com/VHpJ5et). That is probably because batteries can hold a very limited amount of energy and therefore mobile software is developed to use very little electricity. But on the other hand, less energy efficient chargers wont help this. I just mean it's not the big problem about our smartphones energy consumption.
- kickling 7y ago
  Sorry, meant co2 emissions, not energy use.
  - marta_morena 7y ago
    Ahh because these two are decoupled. I am sure smartphone usage contributes a significant portion to CO2 then.
- dotancohen 7y ago
  > therefore mobile software is developed to > use very little electricity. I see that you're _not_ in the mobile dev industry! Power consumption is the type of thing that is talked about in prerelease mobile software, and removed from the bullet points during release. Nobody optimizes for power consumption at the expense of features, bugs, or developer time.

Yetanfou 7y ago

Wireless charging does not work with the majority of devices produced worldwide. It might work with 'flagship' devices and maybe with some devices in the tier under it but it doesn't with the rest.

happytoexplain 7y ago

Sometimes I need to use my phone while it's charging.

AWildC182 7y ago

Qi generates excess heat which degrades the batteries glued in to smart phones, thereby increasing e-waste.

mattlondon 7y ago

Years and years ago when qi was available on the Google Nexus phones the wireless charging was pretty annoyingly over-sensitive to alignment. E.g. you put the phone down but it was 0.5mm too far to the left or 1 degree rotated wrong and it would not charge, meaning you'd wake up in the morning and the battery was flat. Often the phone vibrating knocked it out of alignment even if you got it right the first time. So instead of just plugging the phone in, you had to delicately place the phone in just-the-right-place - repeat 4 or 5 times before you got it right etc. Good riddance frankly - it was a shit user experience. I think the high-priced OEM docks relied on really strong magnets to force alignment. Has it got better yet?

utahcon 7y ago

I wouldn't be at all surprised to see Apple build in some sort of not-Qi charging in future phones. Really surprised they didn't do that to begin with TBH. Where the NFC has to read a compliant Apple chip to allow charging.