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What Finally Killed AirPower

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Re: What Finally Killed AirPower

#101

Post by lobster45 »

KingMachiavelli wrote: post #38
sp332 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can slap my phone down on the charger next to my bed in the dark. I can grab my phone off the charger on my desk at work with one hand. Before wireless charging, it wasn't much hassle, and I only rarely had trouble with my phone battery dying. Now it's almost no hassle, and I never have trouble with my battery dying. It's just a nice quality-of-life boost.

This made a lot (more) sense when even corded charging was kind of slow and meant that the use time to charge time was pretty bad; ~2 hours to charge: ~12 hours to use gives an optimistic 6 use/charge time ratio, but now that fast charging and USB-C power deliver devices can charge in ~30 minutes and last ~20 hours that gives a use/charge ratio of 40. Given that if I have to leave my phone on a wireless charger for m…

I have done some testing with the 3rd party iPhone chargers recently. I have a device that measures the number of watts the charger is generating for the phone. The limit on wireless charging is 7.5 watts and many of them don’t quite get there. Most are between 5 and 6 watts. Now this is about the same as the stock Apple charger that comes with your iPhone. I ended up buying a 3rd party charger that supports up to 20 watts for the fast charging compatible iPhones such as 8, X and Xs. You also need the $20 Apple usb-c to lightning cable, but the result is a truly fast charge. Of course my 2015 Samsung Galaxy s6 came with a fast charger in the box, but I am glad that with pricy accessories we can have the same with the iPhone

Re: What Finally Killed AirPower

#102

Post by bestnameever »

miahi wrote: post #42
samtho wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cables are subject to breaking (specifically the connectors) and given how hard it is for many phones to listen to music via headphones and charge at the same time, I can see the appeal. Also, jacks are only rated for a limited number of cycles (connects, disconnects) due to the fact that there is mechanical connection taking place. In the future, I imagine wireless charging being built into key pieces of furniture (…

Wireless charging is not without costs. One of the costs is that coil heating the article talks about is not limited to the charger, the phone coil also heats up. And being usually stuck to the battery, the already stressed battery (by the charging) is also stressed by the additional coil heat - not good for the non-replaceable battery. I understand that phones (even $1000 ones) are disposable these days, but this ma…

yep. The more I think about it and my own prior habits, I think there are a lot of people who are overusing wireless chargers. I once had wireless chargers everywhere and I never had such poor battery longevity in a phone than on those I charged wirelessly everywhere. If I do it again, I'll leave it by the bedside and that will be it.

Re: What Finally Killed AirPower

#103

Post by PakG1 »

clay_the_ripper wrote: post #2

What a shame, this would be the actual experience of wireless charging that I had envisioned it was. The reality of wireless charging is quite different: fiddly and possible to have your phone be dead in the morning. I wish someone could figure out how to make a true wireless charging mat like this. As it stands, I wouldn’t buy a wireless charger for my wife for example. She’ll just plonk it on there and then ask me…

Hah, I just saw a YouTube ad for I think a Kickstarter that claims to have solved this by redesigning the coils.

Re: What Finally Killed AirPower

#104

Post by oska »

JonathonW wrote: post #52
brian-armstrong wrote: post #11

So my phone is charged by a cable. It plugs into the wall on one side and then plugs into my phone on the other. This system works great - I plug my phone in when I go to bed and unplug it when I wake up. The cable is long enough to plug into my phone even if I want to use it in bed. It's easy, cheap and failproof. What is the draw of wireless charging? What is it that I'm missing? Did anyone ask for this?

Wireless charging’s nice to have at home— it’s pretty convenient to just be able to throw my phone on the charger at night and have it charged in the morning, without having to mess with a cable. The real killer app for me, though, is wireless charging in the car. I’ve got a Qi charger built into my car (and Qi phone mounts are readily available as retrofits for cars that don’t) and it’s really handy (and likely safe…

> and it’s really handy (and likely safer) to be able to just throw my phone in the pad if I realize it’s low while driving

Why are you doing anything with your phone, including ascertaining it's on a low charge, while driving? Plug your phone in at the start of your trip if it needs charging.

Re: What Finally Killed AirPower

#105

Post by atarian »

_bxg1 wrote: post #53
brian-armstrong wrote: post #11

So my phone is charged by a cable. It plugs into the wall on one side and then plugs into my phone on the other. This system works great - I plug my phone in when I go to bed and unplug it when I wake up. The cable is long enough to plug into my phone even if I want to use it in bed. It's easy, cheap and failproof. What is the draw of wireless charging? What is it that I'm missing? Did anyone ask for this?

It takes something easy and makes it effortless . Like AirPods, this has a surprising number of implications that you really don't think about until you try it. If I'm just setting my phone down on my desk and it's at 50%, and my cable is right there, I may not bother to plug it in. Especially if I might get up again in 5 or 10 minutes. But if I can just set it down in a particular place and regain a couple percentag…

That was a very well-worded argument. Now I'm even sadder that they're not releasing AirPower.

Re: What Finally Killed AirPower

#106

Post by oska »

quotemstr wrote: post #43
itslennysfault wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree totally. Not to mention that wireless charging uses about 40% more power. Which for charging phones is a small amount until you think of every person on the planet charging their phone every day.

> Which for charging phones is a small amount until you think of every person on the planet charging their phone every day. It is a small amount of power though. There are about 4.68 billion mobile phone users; let's assume each has one phone. Let's be conservative and assume that all these phones have high-end battery packs, on the order of 4,000 mAh. Let's be even more conservative and assume each phone is used to…

Thanks for doing the math but I don't think one product that consumes one one thousandth of the world's energy production is negligible. (How many coal power stations is that?) And a 40% increase in this consumption for a very minimal increase in 'convenience' (itself debatable) is not negligently wasteful.

Re: What Finally Killed AirPower

#107

Post by xenospn »

tedivm wrote: post #65
torstenvl wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would require sync over WiFi to actually work. Reliably.

They're just going to remove local syncing and stick with cloud based solutions.

Doesn't really work when you're developing locally, tho. Can you imagine loading binaries from the cloud into your phone every single time?

Re: What Finally Killed AirPower

#109

Post by xenospn »

brian-armstrong wrote: post #11

So my phone is charged by a cable. It plugs into the wall on one side and then plugs into my phone on the other. This system works great - I plug my phone in when I go to bed and unplug it when I wake up. The cable is long enough to plug into my phone even if I want to use it in bed. It's easy, cheap and failproof. What is the draw of wireless charging? What is it that I'm missing? Did anyone ask for this?

Im assuming it's very useful for people who can't use both hands.

Re: What Finally Killed AirPower

#110

Post by todd3834 »

brian-armstrong wrote: post #11

So my phone is charged by a cable. It plugs into the wall on one side and then plugs into my phone on the other. This system works great - I plug my phone in when I go to bed and unplug it when I wake up. The cable is long enough to plug into my phone even if I want to use it in bed. It's easy, cheap and failproof. What is the draw of wireless charging? What is it that I'm missing? Did anyone ask for this?

I felt the same way until I bought my wife a wireless charger as something she might think was “neat”. I wasn’t even sure if she would use it but at least it would be an option. Once I saw how nice the experience actually was I bought one for myself. It’s really nice on the bed side table. Much nicer than fiddling with a cord in the dark. It wasn’t life changing but it definitely felt better than plugging in.
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