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The whole push to wireless charging feels like a bad idea. We already are deeply in need of reductions in total global power use or at least efficiency improvements, and wireless charging wastes a huge amount of power. Unless they can figure out how to bring the efficiency in line with direct contact we're better off with clever direct contact without a plug schemes.

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This -- the fact that even highly-optimized inductive charging is about 85% as efficient as direct-contact DC seems to get ignored a lot.

Having said that, I actually understand the appeal of charging mats and the like, because they replace a small but persistent friction (find a charger, plug in the charger, plug in the phone, unplug the phone, plug the phone back in...) with a near-frictionless experience, if you don't count the cost. I'd like to see better conductive charging designs, but it looks like inductive has won out.

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