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Comment by forgot-my-pw | Hacker News Reader

Wireless charging was slow and inefficient. Is this newer tech better?

I like that the charging bay is long so you can charge multiple devices. That's cool.

It's slower than a wire, but it doesn't matter in practice. You put the phone down on your nightstand or desk as you would have done anyway, and it charges. There's nothing to think about.

It's like an electric car. Yes, it's slow to charge. But in practice it's always charged when you're ready to leave in the morning, so in daily use it's more convenient than spending 5 minutes at a fuel pump during your trip.

Problem with a charging bay is, you usually cannot use your phone will charging (compared to wired). It's only useful for overnight charging or long term downtimes.

> It's only useful for overnight charging or long term downtimes.

Not really - My phone sits on my desk next to me throughout the day. If it were charging every time I put it down, even 5-10 minutes at a shot, that would basically add up to a fully charged phone by the time I left my desk.

Right now I have to plug it in to do that, and I only do that if I know I'm going to be there a while - otherwise it's a hassle. With a mat, it's the same effort to put it down as it is without the mat.

I'm just glad at least Tesla doesn't seem to do planned obsolescence with batteries, the way smartphone OEMs do with their battery irreplaceable smartphones that seem to last 2 years before the battery degrades significantly. Tesla's seem to lose about 5% after 10 years

That's because Tesla has the room to properly cool the battery. Phones use batteries as heat sinks for their processors, and heat kills lithium batteries.

This is a reason not to use a thick case, and avoid charging your phone over 80% during the day.

It does matter. Modern smartphones have such abysmally short battery life that I have to charge my Samsung S6 twice during the day, in addition to the overnight charge. Which makes a slow Qi charger useless during the day.

Battery life seems to be almost entirely down to how much you're actually using it. My work Samsung Galaxy A5 (2017) lasts several days (really) because I only look do email and calendar stuff on it, a few times a day.

My iPhone 6s often lasts through the day and half way through the next, when I'm not doing much other than playing Spotify and using a bit of WhatsApp. If I'm actively using it, though, I have to plug it in towards the end of the day.

Depends on the modern smartphone, I have a Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 and it has amazingly good battery life (much better than my company-supplied Samsung Galaxy S8), I can sometimes go two days without charging.

They do cheat with ridiculous background app-killing "features" though (I've tweaked it to my liking and now prefer it)

when i'm in the office, i leave my phone on the bay to charge. i don't literally use my phone while charging, but i do pick it up from time to time to check notifications and then put it back on the bay. so it pretty much charges all day. it probably won't save me more than a second or two every time i pick it up and put it back down, but it's become so second nature to simply drop it on the table without looking that i can't imagine going back to a system where i have to use both hands (and more than an eye) to get a phone charging.

when i'm out, and if i know i will be out for a long time, i'll bring a battery along.

at night, it charges on the bay when i'm asleep.

Nope, this is the same Qi standard that's been used in almost every wirelessly-chargable device.

There's some competing standards like AirFuel (nee A4WP), which might be better. Doesn't matter if nobody uses them.

I think wireless charging slowness can be seen as a feature, not a bug.

Some EE major can correct me, but I think the slower you charge a battery, the better it is for its overall life. (So even for non wireless charging, if possible, it's better to use a 1 amp charger overnight than a 2 amp)

I had a Lumia phone that I charged wirelessly from 2012 to 2017, on its last day, the battery life was around 80% as good as its first day, much better than my friends' phones.

The only use case for me would be to put my phone at night when its battery was less than 20%.

Another thing I read about batteries is that it's better to charge them once a day[1] (so before nighttime) rather than many times during the day. Some people here comment that you always put your phone on the charging plate, I'm not sure this would be good for battery life.

Finally the best 'feature' I noticed is that it's really inconvenient to use your phone while it's charging on its plate, so you're less tempted to use it when going to sleep.

[1] http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/06/battery-charge-l...

The charging bay isn't a thing yet, they plan to make this in 2018, but it seems they need to create a standard for that.

I didn't really understand from the video what this new standard covers that Qi doesn't. Is Qi lacking the feature to charge multiple devices at once and why? Does Qi maybe only have some single-link communication channel between charger and charged-device? I don't know anything about Qi, so any insights are welcome.

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