Wireless Charging Pad Qi

On the one hand...

"One of the criticisms levelled at wireless charging, as explained in this ZDNet article, is that when phones charge via the cable the battery gets a rest, but when they charge on a wireless charging pad it doesn’t. Therefore, the battery goes through its limited number of cycles faster with wireless charging and degrades faster. But is this true?

“A phone’s battery is not drained when you use it while charging wirelessly,” Menno Treffers, chairman of the Wireless Power Consortium, told Digital Trends. “This is a misunderstanding.”"

(Source) (Bolding mine)

And on the other...

"Engineers at online repair and device teardown guide iFixIt said the ZDNet author's findings "sound suspicious...and aren't likely 'very scientific.'"

"I’d guess that the battery drain and cycle count is due to usage, not charging method," iFixIt said in an email reply to questions. "The real damage to a battery comes in rapid full-to-empty (and vice versa) charging/discharging, keeping it fully charged, and overheating it."

Not only do wireless chargers tend to keep batteries topped off, and therefore extend their life, they also reduce mechanical wear on the charging port, the iFixIt engineers said."

(Source) (Bolding mine)

So, you might think since the Qi keeps it fully charged, then it's degrading the battery's life faster. But the article continues:

"But, he added, it's not that simple.

The damage from fully charging your battery has lessened over time with more sophisticated mobile battery management systems and incremental improvements in the battery cell technology itself, he said. For example, in 2007, when Steingart was a graduate student, taking a battery cell repeatedly to 4.2 volts meant "an early death" for it. he said. Today, the same damage to modern battery cells would require at least 4.4 volts.

Even though battery cell technology has improved, there are still too many industry variables to know definitively whether one battery will show greater endurance than another based on continuous charging.

"We simply don't know, without a complicated tear-down and reverse engineering of the battery and battery management system, what the actual state of charge when the phone says '100%' is," Steingart said. "Some apps give voltage indication, yes, but without knowing the specific formulation and composition of the cathode, we don't know exactly.""

One more article states: "I've read articles online over the last month that suggest charging an iPhone 8, 8 Plus or X wirelessly will cause the phone long-term battery damage. Perhaps increasing the charge cycles and causing the phone to need a replacement battery sooner than is ideal. I have problems with this, and I want to write a counter argument and explain why I think these stories are wrong.

The stuff I've seen seems to stem from a ZDNet article. Now I'm not interested in a fight, but my understanding of how wireless charging works is different. I'll explain: In the article the claim is made that during a wireless charge an iPhone is powered from its battery, not the charger. This is, I believe, incorrect.

I'm pretty certain when I say that this is wrong scientifically. A battery can't be charged and discharged at the same time, this is simply not possible. When you place a phone on either a wireless charger, or a cable-based charger, you are providing enough power for both the phone to run, and the battery to charge. The phone is operating on mains power, and the leftover goes into the battery. On low output chargers (wireless included) this might lead to slow battery charging, but the process is always the same."

(Source) (Bolding mine)

So my take away from all of this is that the most damaging thing to do to your battery is rapidly charging/discharging. And then heat. This is why I do make use of a wireless charging pad for my iPhone in the house, but I use a wired car charger. The added heat of a wireless charger is not welcome in a car that's already going to be hot at times and in the sun. (Maybe a case could be made that the wireless chargers sit on the air vent and get cooled that way, but, why bother when the wireless charger needs a cable anyway? Just make the cable go directly to the phone. That's why I suggest this car mount.)

Then that leaves battery degradation due to constantly topping off. And while the stances seem to vary, most don't disagree that it's a relatively minor factor. Yes, with smartphones costing upwards of $1,000 and even more these days, we all want to make sure we're protecting our 'investment'. But really, using a wireless charger or not, or how Li-ion batteries respond to constant 80% to 100% charges, all ultimately add up to a small percentage towards the degradation of the life of the battery.

Some people are of the mindset that the battery is a part of a phone you're going to upgrade from in 2, 3, 4 years anyway - so who cares! But with the price of these devices increasing as it is, that's becoming less reasonable, if it ever was to anyone. Considering you're just now getting a smartphone, I'd assume (and respect) your unwillingness to simply accept this planned obsolescence. I think it's a scummy business tactic and they should be held accountable, but is the US government going to do something to restrict a large corporation? I wouldn't hold my breath.

The ultimate solution would be to make a consumable, the battery, user replaceable. If you paid for Apple Care, the battery replacement is covered, among other things. A lot of us here are probably up to the task of opening our phones and replacing the batteries. I've done it to dozens of older iPhones and it has increased their life span a bit, but since you can't buy replacement batteries directly from Apple, you're gambling with the quality of the replacement battery no matter the source.

So, if I were you, I'd probably just not worry about it. Enjoy having your phone at 100% of its capacity every morning and the conveniences of the wireless charger. Sure, that 100% is going to be of a smaller capacity over time, but it's a long time, considering how small (but not negligible) the charging/discharging/repeat wears at the battery.

Oh, also the latest iOS 13.1 has this:

Battery Health
– Optimized battery charging to slow the rate of battery aging by reducing the time your iPhone spends fully charged

Enjoy your new phone!

With modern phones, especially iPhones, aside from buggy/faulty apps that are causing a problem (which you'll notice when it happens), you don't have to worry about apps running in the background. When you switch away from an app, like going to another one, or going to the home screen, it sticks in memory and doesn't continue to 'run' in the background. In fact, going through and force closing all of your apps could actually drain the battery faster as it will take more work for the phone to re-open these apps when you go back to them later than it does to just freeze them in the background.

The only apps I will actually force close when I'm done with them are anything that uses GPS like google maps, waze, apple maps, etc. I may not even have to do that anymore but I've gotten in the habit.

"When it died after three days, I was a bit upset." Ha! If my phone (iPhone XS) lasted 3 days without a charge I would be doing backflips! A full day of use without dying before you can put it on the charger before bed is generally accepted as what to expect. You're not going to have anywhere near the same off-charge time as with a flip-phone or something like that. This will take some getting used to, but don't worry about it.

A lot of people when they make the jump to smartphones like this really care about battery life almost to the point where it becomes worry. These devices are supposed to make certain aspects of our lives easier. So resist the urge to worry about how battery life is doing. Some days will be better than others. Don't use the battery percentage indicator. Just don't worry about it. Unless some crazy app is malfunctioning or you're stuck inside a building where your phone is desperately non-stop searching for signal, you're going to be fine.

So don't worry about janitoring these functions.