Qi2 Wireless Charging Spec Is Here, Offering Speed Boosts and Magnets (arstechnica.com) 37
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: If you've only ever used standard Qi chargers with devices that don't have their own schemes, the Wireless Power Consortium's announcement today of the first Qi 2.0 devices being ready to launch before the holidays, with more than 100 in the queue behind them, is great. Qi2 sports a "Magnetic Power Profile" (MPP), created with help by Apple's MagSafe team, to help align devices and chargers' coils for faster, more efficient charging. Qi2-certified devices set onto Qi2 chargers can achieve 15 W charging, up from 7.5 W in the standard Qi scheme.
That brings Qi2 devices up to the same speed as iPhones on MagSafe chargers, and it clears up some consumer confusion about how fast a device might charge on Qi, MagSafe, or proprietary chargers. Should a phone and charger be Qi2 certified, you can now expect about 15 W out of it, regardless of whatever Google, Apple, or third party is behind them. Android and iPhone users alike are no longer beholden to their primary hardware vendor if they want 15 W of wireless juice. This announcement does not, however, bring the Qi2 standard close to the far-out speeds that proprietary setups now offer. [...]
A number of accessory makers, including stalwarts Anker and Belkin, had already lined up their Qi2-compatible offerings, waiting for the certification to drop. It will be interesting to see if Qi2 brings a wave of magnet mania to Android phones, akin to the MagSafe-induced blitz a few years back. Magnetic charging packs, wallets, wireless charging for a non-wireless-charging phone -- there's a lot to work with, especially at now somewhat more respectable charging speeds. Regarding speed, the WPC told Android Authority back in January that the Qi2 standards group intends to standardize charging speeds above 15 W by mid-2024. If you need a fast charge, plugging in the right cable to a well-powered source is still the most certain route. But with magnetic alignment and a good deal more universal compatibility, Qi2 drags the broader wireless charging market forward.
That brings Qi2 devices up to the same speed as iPhones on MagSafe chargers, and it clears up some consumer confusion about how fast a device might charge on Qi, MagSafe, or proprietary chargers. Should a phone and charger be Qi2 certified, you can now expect about 15 W out of it, regardless of whatever Google, Apple, or third party is behind them. Android and iPhone users alike are no longer beholden to their primary hardware vendor if they want 15 W of wireless juice. This announcement does not, however, bring the Qi2 standard close to the far-out speeds that proprietary setups now offer. [...]
A number of accessory makers, including stalwarts Anker and Belkin, had already lined up their Qi2-compatible offerings, waiting for the certification to drop. It will be interesting to see if Qi2 brings a wave of magnet mania to Android phones, akin to the MagSafe-induced blitz a few years back. Magnetic charging packs, wallets, wireless charging for a non-wireless-charging phone -- there's a lot to work with, especially at now somewhat more respectable charging speeds. Regarding speed, the WPC told Android Authority back in January that the Qi2 standards group intends to standardize charging speeds above 15 W by mid-2024. If you need a fast charge, plugging in the right cable to a well-powered source is still the most certain route. But with magnetic alignment and a good deal more universal compatibility, Qi2 drags the broader wireless charging market forward.
I don't understand! (Score:2)
I don't understand the pertinence of pushing something that waste as much energy as "wireless charging".
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What don't you understand about it? You "push" something that people might have interest in, how much energy it "wastes" is irrelevant.
Re:I don't understand! (Score:4, Interesting)
The past few phones that I've had all failed due to the physical connector on the charging port failing. Wireless charging is allowing my current phone to last longer.
It would be interesting to compare the cost of needing to replace the phone sooner vs the cost of the extra power.
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Oh the cost of power for yourself should be absolutely negligible. It adds up although with the proliferation of many devices. I know many people that leave their chargers always plugged in so I assume they will do the same with their "wireless charging" charger which should require even more power.
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Even charging full-throttle 10 hours a day, this only amounts to about 150Wh/day in lost power. 150Wh/day is negligible. It takes 150Wh to move an electric car about half a mile. Your fridge uses 10x this much power every day. It's 10x more expensive to dry a load of laundry. People leave dozens of 15W LED bulbs on around their all night and think nothing of it. If you're really trying to save the world from wasted energy, there are far more productive targets than wireless charging lol.
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Oh the cost of power for yourself should be absolutely negligible. It adds up although with the proliferation of many devices. I know many people that leave their chargers always plugged in so I assume they will do the same with their "wireless charging" charger which should require even more power.
Inductive chargers don't work like that. The charger only 'wakes up' when a receiving device is detected. Similar case with wired ones. I mean, just think about it, if you had a charger that was pulling 5/10/15 watts from the wall and not putting it into a device the charger would be in flames before you knew it.
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You're only mostly correct. Chargers don't pull full power when not charging a device, but cheaper ones still pull a small amount; you can tell when the wall wart is warmer than ambient. Ditto with wireless pads, so a wireless charger loses power both at the wart and the pad.
But still, the amount wasted per month is less than what a fridge uses for a few minutes; you're wasting more energy bending over to unplug the charger when not using it than just leaving it alone.
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See link below, they say; "23 percent of northern California household electricity consumption" for "electricity use by inactive devices" might be less but not insignificant.
https://www.nrdc.org/resources... [nrdc.org]
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That report, along with most such reports, is somewhat misleading because people associate "inactive devices" with things like the TV with the flashing LED or a phone charger with a LED that glows 24/7. This isn't really the fault of the authors, because they are very clear about what they are measuring, but if it was measuring what people thought it was measuring it wouldn't be anywhere close to 23%.
From the link you provided, scroll down and open the first PDF, which is the actual report. Read pages 14-20
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Yeah I wrote it might be less than 23% indeed :)
The thing with those unused devices is that they are on 24/7 and this tends to add up at the end of the year. Ovens, heating, washing machines etc. aren't on 24/7 and at least the old ones didn't draw any power when off but new ones have on-board computers drawing power 24/7 while they could simply be unplugged or they could turn themselves completely off requiring a mechanical switch to be turned back on. But hey, a mechanical switch is really expensive so it
Re: I don't understand! (Score:1)
I think you're vastly overestimating the contribution of a 15W power loss in the grand scheme of things. I don't usually drive very far, but a few weeks ago I made a 250mi round trip drive. This is maybe 50kWh in power. I didn't even think about the cost of getting there and back because the $10 was wholly insignificant compared to everything else along that journey.
And yet that insignificant cost of a road trip is equivalent to an entire year of running a wireless charger instead of wired.
A single family t
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You don't drive nor travel to the beach 24/7. Same principle as truckers driving slower but steady. You may drive faster but they still get there before you do. I have computers on 24/7 and they constitute the most important part of my electricity bill. I unplug my other stuff although when not in use :)
It's just a principle, of course I can calculate and estimate power usage as you did. Not arguing your numbers, just saying a considerable amount of energy is wasted nowadays with all those devices while mos
Re: I don't understand! (Score:1)
That's kinda the point though. A single weekend of fun can easily consume a decade worth of wireless charger electricity waste, if not a lifetime. And you wave it it off with a nonchalant "well we don't do that all the time"... It's irrelevant cause all it takes is once.
Of all the wasted electricity in the world, being concerned with wireless charging is like bailing out the titanic with a thimble.
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The past few phones that I've had all failed due to the physical connector on the charging port failing. Wireless charging is allowing my current phone to last longer.
Odd, that's never happened to me, though I did once see an old nokia with a small barrel connector that stopped working to do a buildup of fluff.
It would be interesting to compare the cost of needing to replace the phone sooner vs the cost of the extra power.
Qi is ~50% efficient but let's be honest: the cost of the electricity you put into your phone will never even come close to what the device itself costs. My iPhone's battery is around the 15Wh mark and electricity here is around 35p/kWh. A back of the envelope calculation says that you'd need to add another 3 years of life to make it worthwhile, assuming you use a
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Odd, that's never happened to me, though I did once see an old nokia with a small barrel connector that stopped working to do a buildup of fluff.
That's because you're an adult, and somewhere along the way you learned not to chew on your charger cables.
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The dude is probably careless with its connectors. I am very careful with all of them to prevent the same thing happening to me whether it's USB, lightning SATA, whatever. These things seem to be designed to break quickly from the start.
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15W charging power means ~15W loss every hour. Assume you charge 8 hours full power every day (almost nobody needs to charge this much, but whatever). This is 120Wh per day. In the United States, the average cost for electric is $0.23/kWh. This works out to less than $0.03 (4 cents) per day in lost power. Over the course of a year, it adds up to around $10.
So if you do wireless charging only, you might budget around $20/year for charging your phone. If you switch to wired charging (85% efficiency vs 50%), y
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15W charging power means ~15W loss every hour.
A 100% overhead ? [citation needed]
I found sources claiming a 50% overhead back in 2020. And Qi2 is supposed to improve this.
But you have a point, and I would like to read a serious analysis on this subject.
Re: I don't understand! (Score:1)
The numbers being better only strengthens the point that wireless charging introduces insignificant overhead compared to wired.
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The numbers being better only strengthens the point that wireless charging introduces insignificant overhead compared to wired.
No. The exact number of overhead is important. If it is 50%, it is not acceptable, too much energy is lost. If it is 1%, then it is great, because of the benefits of not having an extra port, cable issues, etc.
Re: I don't understand! (Score:1)
In the context of electricity waste in one's life as a whole (which is what started the discussion), whether a wireless charger is 50%, 75%, or 100% effective is entirely irrelevant. More electricity is "wasted" on the average person's annual sugary cold beverage consumption than decades of wireless charger losses. If you want to significantly reduce electricity waste in the world, cut out pepsi products or whatever your personal equivalent is. That would have a bigger impact than using wired over wireless
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The difference between wired and wireless charging is less than $10 per year in electricity costs (in the US). Would you pay $10/year for an insurance policy that ensured your charging port didn't wear out prematurely? If so, then wireless charging is worth the price.
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It would be interesting to compare the cost of needing to replace the phone sooner vs the cost of the extra power.
Not just the phone, charging cables also fail very often. Simply avoiding the need to replace charging cables due to cable failure most than recovered the cost of any power loss, both monetary and environmentally.
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I don't understand the pertinence of pushing something that waste as much energy as "wireless charging".
Maybe you'd understand if you'd pay attention to all the debates about ports on cell phones. There's the issue of Lightning vs. USB-C vs. any of a number of older or newer ports. This can get into the debate of the presence or absence of any port that could wear out, or get pocket lint or other debris stuck into it. There's how a 1/8" headphone jack compromises waterproofing, which is certainly applicable to any port on portable devices.
People are willing to compromise on features and capabilities to get
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Magnets will increase wireless charging efficiency by better aligning the charging coils.
That said, wired charging isn't super efficient either. Especially rapid charging, where more of the energy is converted to waste heat. Clearly consumers value convenience over higher charging efficiency, probably because the electricity needed is so cheap.
Personally I prefer a nice slow wireless charge at around 500mA. Heating is minimal and the battery lasts longer.
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I don't understand the pertinence of pushing something that waste as much energy as "wireless charging".
How much energy do you think Qi2 wireless charging wastes? Seriously. Have you actually looked at the numbers?
Hint: People are making a mountain out of a molehill when it comes to Qi2.
Wired: Ignoring inefficiencies due to heat loss with the phone battery, wall plug, etc., all of which should be roughly the same for wireless chargers as well, you're basically at 100%. You lose a little heat in the cable itself, but not enough that I'll bother accounting for it here.
Qi: 50-75% transference efficiency [1][2].
Qi 2 Power (Score:1)
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The statement in the article that said previous Qi chargers can only charge at up to 7.5W is incorrect.
Well, I guess that depends on what someone might consider as "standard", since the claim was this is an improvement in power from the "standard Qi scheme".
There's the baseline power profile, or BPP, from version 1.1 which offers power up to 7.5 watts. There's the extended power profile, or EPP, from version 1.2.3 which offers power up to 30 watts. This new magnetic power profile, or MPP, in version 2.0 that offers up to 15 watts of power. Based off the fine article and the Wikipedia page Qi2 is something
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Lots of almost correct there.
First of all, most current phones top out at in the 9-12W range - which puts them at about a 1C charge rate into their 10Wh battery. It's hard to charge much faster, because the generated heat is hard to get rid of. I don't see phones going past 15W any time in the near future because of the heat - not just from Qi inefficiency, but also heat generated in the battery. Tablets, on the other hand, could likely take advantage of higher charge rates simply due to the larger radia
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Higher charging power required physical alignment of the phone, and cooling. Those 50W wireless chargers some manufacturers were offering with their phones had a built in fan to cool the device.
15W with magnetic alignment is pretty decent, and does away with the need for other silliness.
Obligatory - Magnets! (Score:2)