DRM for chargers? Google Pixel 3 locks fast Qi charging to its own stand

Have you seen the manufacturing quality of some of the chargers out there? I wouldn't be surprised if this wasn't an effort by Google to prevent a long series of "Google phones explode into flames!" clickbait headlines when ultra-cheap knock-off charging pads start showing up at flea markets.

If a model/brand becomes known for catching on fire, that entire model/brand can be easily restricted from things like planes.

So bad chargers and replacement batteries are a potential threat to the reputation of a brand... that said, the problem with Samsung batteries catching on fire was all Samsung's fault.

If the sketchy charger bricks the phone but the customer is dishonest about using the sketchy charger at time of RMA, do you expect Google to engage in he-said-phone-said arguments with customers? "Ah but your big-brother device says it was plugged into a toaster oven last week."

Maybe they're trying to keep their warranty repair costs in check. Maybe they would have allow it after your warranty expires and you're on the hook for the new battery instead of them.

Sure. But it's the manufacturer's prerogative to build a device they want to build. Also this design decision is not to enforce copyright protection or is based on some other anti-consumer design, but rather is done for quality reasons - and that's a fair choice for them to make.

>Shouldn’t providing a safe charging be a charger manufacturer’s responsibility?

'safe' is ambiguous in this context. The charger may be 'safe' in that it won't catch fire and kill anybody, but may still prematurely cut your batteries life.

A valid response is for consumers to say they don't want warranties any more. But if you do want a warranty, you need to use your device with approved devices...

There is no such responsibility if they are overseas and shipping directly to the consumer.

> it should be consumers call

You should run that line of reasoning by your local fire marshal, and then also your insurance agent.

This is false. Only the low power Qi standard is 5W. Medium power is up to 120W and there is talk of a high power mode up to 1kW.

This seems similar to my Nexus 6 phone. It shipped with a Google high-speed charger (wired) which offers a 15 minute "fast charge" mode. However, if I plug it into an Apple charger (which will work just fine) it doesn't use fast charge mode and reverts to standard charge mode. I'm perfectly OK with this situation.

It's a rock solid phone, runs stock android (Android One), no notch, decent enough camera, plenty of storage (for me).

I was planning on getting the Pixel 3 and keep the Nokia as a spare but I have no need to spend a grand on a phone which ostensibly doen't do anything more for me.

I've ruled out Android out of personal preference. Not an endorsement of iOS or a condemnation of Android. Just preference.

The s8, iphone x, etc where great jumps ahead (or at least they seemed to be, due to the different form factor and all). It is understandable that the year after that feels underwhelming, but it's weird that they chose this specific moment to increase prices.

Perhaps there's a big jump coming in the following years and they're trying to make the price increase for those features more palatable through gradual increases?

All you really need to know is if the phone supports "wireless charging", and if it does it will charge on a Qi pad.

Yes there are variances in compatibility with different charging rates but the same was true of USB and it was never so universal across devices.

thanks to the EU regulation which enforced it when proliferation of custom chargers became unbearable.

I wonder how that Google's charger lock-up will work in EU given the regulation. Or may be Google does this only in US?

Poorly implemented fast charging can ruin your phone's battery quicker than most anything else, so really the issue here is would you rather have google try and help protect your hardware or are you ok with taking the risk that all of the cheap chinese chargers you come across aren't going to damage your phone.

(You could say you're paying to have your implementation certified, I don't know how they will do that. I think that Google won't want to be permanently in the business of making their own exclusive brand/line of wireless phone chargers.)

HP had a similar charging DRM scheme on their first few models with USB-C charging but seems to have dropped it.

Apple has been doing this with non-MFi chargers since iOS 7. A lot of people were mad when the OS update made their perfectly good chargers stop working. Of course now there are clones of the MFi authentication chip and even with a new chip revision Apple can't reject them without also breaking all of the old legitimate chargers. So it completely failed to actually solve the problem anyway.

Whether it was always intended to be incompatible,or they had to put the hacky handshake in late in the process to prevent the device being 'a bit fiery' I don't know.

Can we please go back to plastic? It was lighter and far more impact resistant.

Also, can I just have a rectangular screen? I don't need it to be curved or have rounded edges. I'm ok with a chin and/or forehead bezel. No notch, though.

Not to mention headphone jacks, removable batteries, and physical buttons.