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Comment by kbrwn | Hacker News Reader

To everyone that thinks no ports, Qi only iPhones are the future. What if you want to use your phone while it chargers? Charge your phone in the car?

I think we are another 10 years at least from having a device that could last long enough off a single charge to warrant occasionally leaving it on a pad over night as the main charging method.

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My car has an option for a built in Qi charger. It’s in the spot you normally put your phone anyway.

That being said, how would you service a portless phone? There would be no more DFU mode.

It seems like it’s essential right now at least. The Apple Watch has a hidden lightning port that I have never even seen.

You’ve never seen it because it doesn’t exist. :)

It was an unsubstantiated rumor.

And how would you activate CarPlay? At the moment it's wired-only, and I'm skeptical as to whether it could be made to work over Bluetooth in existing cars. If you bought a new car today with wired CarPlay, you might still be driving it in 5 or even 10 years, and you really wouldn't want to lose the ability to actually use CarPlay in just a year or two.

There’s wireless Carplay today.

Really? Neat, I hadn't heard about that. I will have to look it up. I wonder if my car supports it.

I think only BMWs support it right now.

Well, that lets me out, for sure. Ah, well.

Really poorly secured wireless interfaces that can be hijacked by 3LAs.

They could do something like the apple watch. There would be a strong magnet on the bottom of the phone and a miniature coil? Or just like a couple contact pads on the bottom exclusively for power. Kinda like the smart connector. They could do it and still have the ability to satisfy wire-like use cases.

I would not be a fan of not having a charging port, but I Qi charge my phone in the car every day. It's fine. One of my cars has it built-in to the armrest, and in another I have a third-party mount with an integrated Qi charger.

I've almost completely moved to Qi charging my phone.

Oddly it took a while for me to find an in car CD mount type, as most of them are air vent types.

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