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Comment by Androider | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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)

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.

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.

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