advantages, disadvantages and tips for choosing

A few years ago, wire­less charg­ing of gad­gets seemed to be some­thing inno­v­a­tive, but in 2018 it has become anoth­er stan­dard. Now this func­tion is equipped with all flag­ships with­out excep­tion and even some bud­get smart­phones.

Wire­less charg­ers of all shapes and sizes hit the mar­ket this year. And since many users are still not very well versed in this area, choos­ing such a mem­o­ry can be a daunt­ing task. Let’s try to sim­pli­fy it. Here’s every­thing you need to know about wire­less charg­ing tech­nol­o­gy and how to choose the right wire­less charg­er.

How it works

Most phones capa­ble of wire­less charg­ing use the Qi pow­er stan­dard. It is an inter­na­tion­al stan­dard devel­oped by the Wire­less Pow­er Con­sor­tium (WPC) for pow­er trans­mis­sion over short dis­tances.

The tech­nol­o­gy itself is based on the inter­ac­tion of elec­tro­mag­net­ic coils. The trans­mit­ter coil locat­ed in the charg­er itself cre­ates an elec­tro­mag­net­ic field that affects the receiv­er coil locat­ed inside the phone. That is, the charg­ing itself occurs through induc­tive ener­gy trans­fer, with­out con­tact between the con­duc­tors.

In this case, the size of the coils is impor­tant. Larg­er coils are capa­ble of gen­er­at­ing a stronger elec­tro­mag­net­ic field so that the receiv­er coil can be fur­ther away from the trans­mit­ter coil. But with small coils, like the ones that fit in a smart­phone case, the receiv­er and trans­mit­ter need to be very close.

Advantages

The first and most obvi­ous plus is ease of use. You sim­ply place your smart­phone on the plat­form and it charges imme­di­ate­ly. No cables need to be con­nect­ed.

The sec­ond advan­tage fol­lows from the first. Because you don’t have to plug in the cable all the time, the con­nec­tor lasts longer. The dete­ri­o­ra­tion of the cable jack is the most com­mon break­down with which users seek smart­phone repair.

Some wire­less charg­ers are designed in the form of ver­ti­cal stands, so they are con­ve­nient to use when watch­ing videos and mak­ing video calls.

Flaws

One of the main dis­ad­van­tages of wire­less charg­ing is the increased charge time. Of course, the speed depends on the pow­er of a par­tic­u­lar adapter, but in gen­er­al, wire­less charg­ing is always slow­er than wired. There are wire­less charg­ers that pro­vide “fast charg­ing”, but again, they are slow­er than wired charg­ers with Fast Charg­ing.

The sec­ond draw­back is reduced mobil­i­ty. When the phone is con­nect­ed to the cable, you can charge it and per­form some activ­i­ty at the same time (although this is what caus­es the con­nec­tor to wear out quick­ly). If you remove your smart­phone from the wire­less charg­er plat­form, charg­ing stops. So play­ing some­thing ener­gy-inten­sive and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly recharg­ing your smart­phone will not work.

Final­ly, the wire­less charg­ers them­selves are more bulky than con­ven­tion­al wired adapters with a cable. You can’t just stuff them into your pock­et and take them with you on a trip to use when you find an out­let.

How to choose a wireless memory

As already men­tioned, smart­phones with wire­less charg­ing func­tion use the Qi stan­dard. This means that if this stan­dard is indi­cat­ed in the char­ac­ter­is­tics of your smart­phone, and “Qi cer­ti­fied” appears on the charg­er, then they are most like­ly com­pat­i­ble. True, it is still rec­om­mend­ed to check the list of sup­port­ed smart­phone mod­els for each mem­o­ry. Because there are a num­ber of nuances that are impor­tant to pay atten­tion to.

So, if you buy a pow­er­ful mem­o­ry, but your smart­phone is able to receive only a small amount of ener­gy “through the air”, it will cer­tain­ly not burn out. The phone will only receive what it is capa­ble of. But this will mean that you sim­ply over­paid for pow­er that you do not need.

The new iPhones can charge up to 7.5 watts, so it makes no sense for them to buy any­thing more pow­er­ful. And some mod­els of Android smart­phones are capa­ble of receiv­ing up to 15 watts. There­fore, before buy­ing, you need to study the char­ac­ter­is­tics of your smart­phone.

How­ev­er, if charg­ing speed is not impor­tant to you, you can sim­ply buy a wire­less charg­er with a pow­er of 5 watts. Even if your smart­phone is capa­ble of receiv­ing more ener­gy, it will also recharge from such a mem­o­ry, although it will take longer. This is the uni­ver­sal and cheap­est option avail­able to every­one.

If you buy a wire­less charg­er with a pow­er out­put of 10 watts or more, please note that this charg­er may require its own high-pow­ered AC adapter.