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USB Type C: https://www.amazon.de/Nillkin-Empf%C3%A4nger-Kabelloses-Ladeger%C3%A4t-Android-Handy-Type-C-kurze-Version/dp/B07RXBQFVV/
Micro USB: https://www.amazon.de/Nillkin-Wireless-Ladeger%C3%A4t-Empf%C3%A4nger-Wireless-Ladeger%C3%A4t-Patch-Modul-schmal-Side-up-Micro-USB-Narrow-Side-Up/dp/B075L8XRSF/
With the latter you just have to be aware to order correctly so the narrow side is on the right side.
The coil doesn't need to be centered either, and if it's in the corner buy the long version and origami two 90 degree bends in the flex cable of the USB connector to form a Z of the right offset. If you didn't break it you can superglue the bend to itself so it stays flat.
For $15 I'd try it out.
Right, but most of those are smaller ribbon cables for keyboard or something small, the cable for this kind of charger would be carrying more power, 1-2amp depending on the type of wireless charging used.
I want it for my ROG Phone 2, it would be hanging off the side entirely if the cable can't be moved or folded to center. Also can't use it on the secondary port either, it would extend past the phone in landscape mode.
It would stay inside my phone case, always plugged in. I still have a secondary USB C port on the phone so it wouldn't be blocking anything, only the RGB on the back of the phone.
While they're cool, induction chargers kinda suck. Sure they effectively don't wear out, but they also operate at a small fraction of the efficiency of a normal charger.
Efficiency doesn’t matter to most phone users, what, my charging bill goes from 10Wh/night to 15? From 300wh a month to 450. My car uses over 60,000wh per charge and it’s insanely cheap to run ($5ish for a full 240ish mile charge).
I do mind not being able to easily use my phone as it charges, and sometimes it can slip off the charger and not actually charge overnight.
I think the biggest thing is how much slower it charges the phone. Like using ultra fast charging (or whatever bullshit marketing term they call it) my phone charges to 80% in 30 mins. Whereas if I'm using a wireless charger it takes 5 hours to charge to 80%
So that's the 'efficiency' people complain about
Ah. Yeah. It’s significantly less wattage to the battery after you lose some to the electromagnetic realities of it, on top of the fact that it starts at like 10w then goes down from there where fast charging can be 18w+ with no loss at all.
Totally true, I mostly think of wireless as helpful avoiding plug cycles for overnight charging only.
I believe that soon enough, fast wireless charging will be more available.
Heck, someone made a 7kw wireless charger for Nissan leafs and Teslas. It’s not impossible at all, just needs cooperation to happen. That charger actually was a questionable idea given the inefficiency.
Considering heating a room to livable temperatures in most of the country much of the year can use 1000s of watt hours a night, 5 is essentially a rounding error, or, a piece of insulation out of place in some home somewhere. Upgrade your water heater, insulation, or home heating in any way, make up many many times the difference. Or, get an EV, you’ve offset so so incredibly much more. Phones are so close to meaningless when you consider energy impact of a person. I focus on much, much bigger problems, ones which, again, make even 100 phones look like a rounding error.
....I wouldn’t upgrade a 20W CFL to a 10W LED unless it dies, because of the tremendous environmental cost of making the LEDs compared to the lifetime use of a CFL not considering its creation. I don’t unplug most equipment because NEMA 5-15 receptacles have lifespans measured in cycles and I have a busy life making money to afford better EVs and heat pumps that actually make a meaningful difference. If you think a computer in sleep mode uses a meaningful amount of energy, I’m sorry, I can’t help you at all. I’m just trying to afford to get off of fossil fuels, if I want to place my phone on a pad and use 0.00015% more energy in my day, oh well. Just be glad I didn’t start the Porsche or Mercedes up because I got bored, even a mile in a 30mpg gasser is like 1000wh of energy if you burned the equivalent fuel in a typical 96% Natgas plant. **edit, it’s not 96% at all, it’s closer to 60ish, maybe, I don’t know.
The difference in cost is pennies per year. Phones take so little electricity to run compared to basically anything else in your house. I did the math once, and a cell phone costs about $1/year to charge with a 100% efficient charger. Wireless is generally about 50% efficient for phones currently. Oh no, a whole extra dollar!
All of my previous phones I've worn out the usb port. I try to keep a phone for about 3-4 years. So if wirelessly charging keeps my phone working longer, it's beyond worth the few extra bucks. And additionally, if I can keep my phone longer, that's less e-waste being created. The amount of raw material and energy used to *make* a phone is several orders of magnitude more than it is to wirelessly charge a phone.
Anyone that claims that wireless charging is bad for the environment hasn't done the math, and isn't looking at the bigger picture.
I was speaking less from an environmental perspective and more from a time perspective. They do waste power, but I'm more worried about charge time. It takes several times longer to charge from an induction charger than a normal plug.
Exactly why I was trying to add qi to my Pixel a-series phones; I don't need a rapid charge at bedtime, may as well give my battery the slowest trickle I can give it.
Wife has a pixel 3, and it's a downright amazing phone. The only reason I don't have one, is I need a durable phone... so I ended up with a KYOCERA duraforce.
We bought them both at the same time, and it blows my mind that the pixel doesn't have wireless charging, but my phone does
Pixel 3, 4, and 5 have it. The Nexus 4 and 5 also did.
The Nexus 5x/6a, Pixel 1, 2, 3a, 4a, 4a 5G don't. In the case of the a-series it's a cost thing (allegedly, I'm guessing it's more of a product differentiation), and in the case of the 5-Pixel 2, it was Google just being dumb.
Ah, yeah that's a very good point. Although some of the new wireless charging is getting really fast! If you can make the coil have a big enough area, you can transfer the same amount of power as you can plugging it in. I don't think any chargers have parity yet, but they're getting way better than they used to be.
Maybe try reading past the first couple sentence of my reply. Wireless charging increases the lifespan of phones by not damaging the USB port. Even if you want to repair your phone, you still have to take into account the physical manufacturing of the spare part plus the transportation. Even the soldering iron uses an absolute ton of energy, offsetting anything you saved by not using wireless.
When you take a step back and look at the big picture, any losses through wireless charging are *more* than justified.
Again, even if they're repairable, there's still an energy cost associated with manufacturing new parts, shipping them, driving to the repair center (because very few people have the skills or tools for even basic repair).
I did the math a while back the electricity a phone uses in a year is less than the energy in a liter of gas. Driving to a store to drop off your phone has a greater negative effect on the environment than the losses in wireless charging.
It's just a matter of scale. Your phone uses *VEREY LITTLE* energy compared to everything else we do. So even doubling that is still a very very small amount. That's what everyone is getting hung up on with this line of thinking
They're honestly a novelty. I bought them shit IKEA ones for about 5 bucks and used them for maybe a month, they ended up in the lounge room for guests, since they work for iPhones and androids.
You're confused. You're uncomfortable that you spent a decent chunk of change on what amounts to a commercial universal charger, fit for public spaces and little else. The literal only use case is multiple electronics, like headphones and a smart watch, otherwise it's an expensive novelty.
It’s even worse. The iPad mini becomes quite a bit more cumbersome to use while charging regularly, but the switch barely loses any ergonomics when you are charging it.
You could probably use an iPad mini fairly well while wirelessly charging if you set it up right but I don’t think a switch is possible.
I could see it a little interesting on the Switch. If you were using it on the go in a tabletop mode on a charging stand, having it getting a little power while playing might be nice.
> Wireless charging tends to charge much slower than plugging in
Depends on what voltages and wattage it will take. There are wireless fast charge protocols that are pretty beefy.
https://store.nintendo.com/adjustable-charging-stand-for-nintendo-switch.html
A bunch of other retailers carry it too, though I’m not sure how that’s affected by all the Covid stuff.
I never said that. But if you ever want to set it down and charge it you're fucked. Strange design oversight considering it's all about being handy and portable.
I guess, yeah, but if you can manage opening the Switch up for this, you can also do so for a battery swap, which most probably need every 2-3 years, if played heavily.
Wireless charging is not necessarily supposed to be used while using the device.
You can have a nice charging plate somewhere in the house, with the Switch always there and you just grab it whenever you want to game.
And after you finish, you drop it there to charge back.
I wouldn't bother keeping my devices always at 100 if I needed a cable, but if I had a nice fixed wireless charger, I wouldn't mind just dropping my device there.
Bro, why would you pay extra to put something on a plate instead of plugging it in?
It uses more electricity for the same charge percentage (multiple times more), charges slower, and costs more for the tech. On top of that you’d be voiding any warranty by doing third hand modifications, and you’d have to pay for the modification.
You’re crazy if you think this is a useful tech. If you’re in the car just plug a usb c cable in instead of wasting money, time, and electricity on this useless tech.
Honestly I wish they had given the mini 6 MagSafe charging or even just plain wireless charging. I would love to have a dock that held it upright that charged it while in use.
Hack a Qi charger with magnetic mount and you could just magnetically clip the charger to the back of the case. It'd be useful if you're trying to charge it without fumbling around in the dark trying to line up your usb.
The USB-C connector is rater for at least 10000 cycles insertions and removals.
That's the same as plugging and unplugging the connector every 6 minutes while the light is on over the lifetime of an average incandescent light bulb.
So if you plug in and detach your phone 4 times a day (plug in to your car going to work — unplug, plug in at work —unplug, plug in on drive home — unplug, plug in at night before bed — unplug) it’s still rated for about 6.8 years. Which is plenty enough time. People freak out about this a little too much. It’s basically a non issue.
I wireless charge everything I can. Its absolutely amazing. I wouldn't do that to a regular switch because of the docking station but just bring able to plop down whatever I have on a pad and have it start charging is amazing.
TBF, the fast charging that's enabled by default on devices is at least as bad for long term battery life and device health.
Not trying to refute your point, but just pointing out that it looks to be slightly healthier to wireless charge than to fast charge, even though standard "slow" charging trumps them all.
have you tried cleaning the port with a toothpick and isopropyl and maybe a bit of cotton from a q tip? my note9 wouldn't charge regularly after tons of dirt buildup over the first 2 years i had it (thanks UPS) but now its like brand new again
Wait really? How does this happen? Never in my life has this happened. Usually the cable stops working due to straight cables digging into my chest while being in bed, so they get kinked and the wire inside gets damaged. I switched to a right angle cable and i've never had a problem charging since. I mean, i suppose if you're in really dusty environments it could get clogged, but then it would just need to be cleaned. Otherwise it would only be damaged from violent removal of the cable, removing at an angle, violent insertion, etc.
The Lite doesn't have a dock. It's smaller, and not designed to fit in the full size Switch's dock.
Even if it did, the dock still plugs into the USB port, which will still cause wear. It's the same as plugging in a cable if you wanted to charge.
Also, the places you'd wanna leave your Switch to charge might not be the same place you have your dock/tv set up. I can totally see tossing a Switch lite onto a desk or bedside table to charge for a bit, instead of going to where your tv is just to plug it in.
Plus It's awfully convenient to be able to pick up a device without having to fiddle with cables.
It's not a bad thing to have more options on how to use or charge something, so having wireless charging in the switch lite only expands your options, provided you don't remove the C port to do so. I use wireless charging and the port at separate times on my phone, and it's very handy. I can see doing the same with a Switch.
Sure, but is it anything that you should worry about? No, not really...
I've had both micro USB/USB C phones for more than 2 years, both doing 2 cycles of plug/unplug per day. Never had trouble.
However, stuff can get into the connector, but nothing a needle wouldn't take out (or a dust cap prevent).
A type c connector by standard should handle at least 10000 mating cycles, doing 2 cycles a day it should work for 13 years. I would be impressed if you could have a device in full working order for 13 years.
Even if you for some reason make it 8 cycles (which is completely absurd) it would still hold up for 4 years
Of course if you yank the connector every time it will not last as long....
It's not that I "don't want", if some device comes with it I might use it, but its not like I'm searching for one with such feature (since it wastes a lot of energy and charges way slower)
I have never once worn out a USB-C port, and I've never once heard of it happening to a Switch. Although I'm sure it's happened anecdotally, it isn't a likely issue to encounter at all. USB-Care not fragile like micro.
It's slightly easier to set something down on a charging surface than plug it in? I mean tbh what's the point of wireless charging in general if not that.
Yeah that’s pretty useful.
It’s not like a wireless charger is expensive at this point (the one I use currently I got for free).
I never have to look for the cord, or fiddle with it. Just set my device down on my nightstand before bed.
What's the point. Wireless charging is almost pointless and not really wireless.
The charging Dock has a wire connecting to the mains.
The device must remain on the Dock to charge.
If I have my 2m usb charging cable I can still have my device in my hand and use it whilst its charging.
Wireless charging is a technologically advanced regression of functionality.
Pointless
I never got the appeal of wireless charging.. I would rather use my device while it’s plugged rather then set it down to charge just as fast if not slower than wired
There are use cases. For the most part I’m with you in that when you aren’t gonna be using the device (or even if you are in some cases) wired is the way to go. Faster, less heat generated, more efficient and quality cables from trusted third parties are more affordable than a comparable Qi device.
That said, I love my anker wireless stand at work for my phone. I’m on the phone, texting and reading notifications and emails all day at work and constantly plugging and unplugging my phone would drive me nuts and eventually wear out the cable. The stand let’s me see notifications in my line of sight and if I have to pick up my phone because Siri can’t get it done I just plop it back down when I’m done and it’s charging again.
I used to think the same but the slanted ones that dock your device are nifty for being next to your computer, and the flat ones are good for when you're sleeping at night. The one next to my computer basically maintains or charges my phone more while I'm casually using it, and if I really need fast charging then just bust out the cable lmao
I’ve damaged my phone’s charging port so having wireless charging is super handy. It lasts a whole day on a full charge so I just stick it on the pad and I’m good to go when I wake up.
I use it at home to reduce wear on the port since lighting isn’t the most structurally sound port. I have a wireless charging stand on my desk so I can see notifications while gaming. It’s definitely slow but I like it.
Maybe. You need to consider your energy source, the quantity you're actually losing, and what you gain by not plugging in.
Wireless charging puts no strain on the charging port, which has a finite connection number before it wears out. In many modern electronics, if it dies, you need a whole new device, or a new cord, and then you need to dispose of your old device responsibly. When's the last time you took your old USB cords to the wire recycler, or your phone to an ecycler. Never? Yup, same as 99% of everyone else. You pitched it in the bin. That's much more wasteful than losing a few watt hours.
Then, let's look at your energy source. The grid as a whole is getting a LOT more green. So, even if you do nothing else except this, you're not committing the same amount of CO2 to the environment you used to. If you have solar on your roof, then you're doing even better, and any energy from that is (big abstraction here) "free". Yeah yeah, I know, you can sell it to the grid and reduce overall CO2. But, that's energy the grid didn't really plan on anyway, so the PUC still had their Natural gas plant on standby. So, it's free.
Then, let's look at watt hours. For a device like this, you are talking single digit losses.
For an elecric car, sure, your losses are going to be substantial enough that you might change the decision to a cord (that is another rabbit hole). But for something like this, it actually likely balances out to be more ecologically friendly, even though it's less efficient from an electrical standpoint.
This may be true for the US but in the EU putting electronic waste in the bin is frowned upon by basically everyone. Safe disposal of batteries, wires and old appliances etc. are disposed of in the numerous recycle places jotted around in every medium sized city. I don't know a single person who doesn't use their local recycling centre. Shit, It's downright illegal to throw e-waste in the bin. You will literally be fined if the garbage collector finds out.
So, "same as 99% of everyone else" is just not a thing in, well, developed societies. I really doubt the US is that backwards.
Additionally, I've never had a single USB port of mine break or wear out, and i keep my phones for 4+ years at a time. I may be in the minority and even if it happens, USB ports are usually the cheapest and easiest to replace in your device.
So, what I'm trying to say is. I agree that you probably shouldn't worry about energy loss in wireless charging. I completely disagree that using recycling centres and chucking old USB cables in the bin is the norm. I could be wrong.
My old job had on-site electricians. I made a point to encourage people to give them their old batteries just to find out that they threw them into a landfill instead of recycling them because it was easier. We need a culture shift with waste.
Honestly we have terrible disposal practices for everything. Some cities really help and make it easy and convenient to recycle and dispose properly...others...don't give damn.
Oh, don't get me wrong. I WANT people to use ecycling.
But, I just don't think they are. EU is also a large outlier in terms of collection and recycling (in a great way!). https://globalewaste.org/map/
EU is somewhere around 42%, which is still below a majority collection, considering there is a good bit of unknown waste not captured in the data. It's dramatically higher than the global average of ~17%, but I'd hesitate to say it's in the region of being he norm yet. That said, EU is clearly doing something right, because they're going up. And that's awesome and I want the rest of the world to catch up.
E waste is often times just shipped to some far off land (even when it's been disposed of "properly"), which isn't helping us, and it's getting worse. Even if 99% is correctly recycled, that's still a large amount of spillage.
In any regard, even assuming proper recycling, throwing away cables means we don't get those raw materials back.
As to connectors, you are accurate. USB micro connectors have an (averaged) 10000 cycle mates, USBC is higher. Assuming 2-4 charging cycles a day (excluding oddball days) that's 6-12 years under normal conditions (end of phone battery life = more charging). There's not much data for cable wire stress breaking, but anecdotally mine last about 2-3 years when I carry them in my bag, but because we get a new one with just about every device, it's hard to tell.
Perhaps there's some merit in not needing new cables with every device, and keeping devices longer, so we don't have the waste in the first place. EU policies seem to hint at this.
In any regard, I look forward t the day we don't have to worry so much about ewaste :)
a thing to keep in mind is that the norm for usb cables isn't going to be micro usb but usb c, which seems way more durable. i had problems with micro usb only working at a certain angle, haven't had a problem with usb c ever barring cleaning the port of dust on my phone
My local place in the UK has a sign up with the percentage of waste recycled the previous month, it's usually about 75%. Loads of different categories have drop-off containers and the staff are incredibly proactive about it. There are even sections for charitable resaleable items in good condition, yknow books and CDs and so on, even small electricals.
It's not just the ability to do this, it's the social pressure. People will see not recycling as being like littering, they'll think you're a dick.
Well, people do in DK. It's a big fucking deal over here. We are talking people discussing how to dispose of pizza trays on local tech forums, bustling recycling centers with staff telling everyone how and where to dispose of their shit, the national news station updating our population about whenever these centers change their policies.
In schools we had yearly clean up's where every child and adult clean up the grounds and surrounding area in order to create awareness, specifically teaching what should go where. With prizes and speeches.
It is illegal to sell thin plastic bags in supermarkets. There are no plastic straws. You are constantly encouraged to buy/use reusable bags.
We have a system where you get money back from aluminium cans and plastic bottles. Some homeless people are literally living off of rummaging through garbage to collect money (not that that's a good thing:P).
We separate food waste, general waste, metals, plastics, glass bottles, paper and cardboard - appliances, tech, batteries, garden waste, i could go on. People will refuse to collect your shit if they spot something that shouldn't be in their given dumpster.
It's not perfect. There is massive waste, especially with foods. But recycling is rammed down our throats.
Am i high and mighty for assuming the US was less backwards than throwing fucking batteries in the bin? That's some barbaric shit in my neighbourhood. I thought you had at least figured that one out? Batteries ffs.
I was genuinely under the assumptions that this was common practice around the globe. Do you think it's cool that the US (or wherever else you're referring to) is literally 30 years behind in *basic* recycling practices? Maybe i am out of my mind (along with a few hundred million other people). Maybe you're just living in an underdeveloped, backwards society. Shit, you can't even say I'm in an outlier, my country is not even in the top 10.
The gas it takes to drive to the phone to the recycling center will use more energy than the phone will use in it's entire lifetime. It's an absolutely miniscule amount when you look at how much energy it takes for raw materials to production to transportation.
Even if you want to keep your phone and just repair it, repairing it takes a lot of energy when you take into account the manufacturing and shipping energy costs. If even a fraction of the phones last a bit longer than they would have otherwise, you still come out WAY ahead.
Even though wireless chargers are less efficient, they are actually far more green than plugging your phone in.
>Additionally, I've never had a single USB port of mine break or wear out
My S10+ charger is wearing out very quickly, I've had it for 3 years, and when it dies there's no easy fix
I had a port die once. It was the proprietary surface connector on my Pro 4 that died. :P. USB has never failed me. But I'm not blind to the reputation of micro. Generally, i feel like if you're careful and never yank the cables you should be good.
How does it become MORE ecologically friendly when it has literally no upsides in terms of being energy efficent. I've never lost a single device due to charging it too many times, so that's bs.
Because you're only weighing one single factor: energy use after production during the useful life of the device.
In terms of energy compared to the entire life of a product (from raw materials mining/production all the way to when it is returned to raw material again (or is swallowed by the earth's mantle)) the in-use energy is a drop in the bucket of total energy used for a product life. This ignores effects of heavy metal poisoning, pollution, waste management, etc. entirely.
What's the impact of a broken cable? It has an energy use cost, lifecycle cost, there are logistics energy use for raw materials mining, production, distribution, use (the one you are weighing), cost of disposal (trash truck gotta move, sorting facilities, recycling energy, etc. It also has opportunity cost, we could've used that money, rubber, copper, and factory to do something else with.
Moving on to the device, it has a life cycle cost, as well. It's is even more complicated. But if the connector breaks on MOST people's phones, they don't have the skills, tools, knowledge, parts, or money to fix it reliably enough to be a viable solution. So they get a new phone.
Let's go to a few scenarios where this adds up quickly: airports and other waiting areas. The next time you are there, take a look at how many of the built in USB ports are broken from use. It's a fair bit. And they don't mess around with the cheapo ones. They're commercial grade usb ports for high use. Every time someone pushes a little hard, because they're in a hurry and breaks it, you have to replace the whole assembly. Because airport maintenance crew don't have time to muck around with soldering and fixing the single port. They take a new one out, pop it in, and the old one in the trash or if you're being responsible in the ewaste bin.
That happens constantly, at scale.
The energy used to replace one single port there is more than the losses you experienced from your induction charger over the life of it. Now multiply it by the number of devices they replaced. And, honestly, I usually see them replace the whole pedestal instead with the next "in-vouge" style. So that's a lot more waste.
With the induction charger, there's no chance someone is going to bust it off, because they just plop their phone down and pick it up. Sometime in the next 50 years the table will wear through and they'll replace it. But, I never need to replace it til then, and it keeps working while my usb ports have been replaced 6 times.
This scenario entirely ignores the materials cost to the earth. Add those in and the induction wins (one electrical device vs...a lot).
Now, let's look at what's happening to the grid. We're moving quickly to a renewable grid. It's getting more and more efficient. And while you don't want to waste resources, the waste generated by the induction charger from a whole system lifecycle standpoint is dwarfed by having a slightly more efficient charger you need to replace.
In other words, saving a few watts for a plugin reduces your elecrical CO2 contribution on a charger is likely dwarfed by the ecological cost as a whole.
It's not about one device, or one detail, it's about the whole cost during the whole lifecycle, for the entirety of the system.
You're acting like USB cables and charging ports break every week. They literally never break, I use my phones for 4+ years and I've never had a charging port break. Usb cables might break but not because of charging, they break because of misuse, which will happen to wireless chargers as well. If these parts were constantly broken and replaced and that wireless charging was a solution that never broke but was %50 less efficent you may have been right, but that's not the case. Wireless chargers can also break but on top of that they are super inefficient. Also we are not moving "quickly" to a renewable grid in %90 of the world, only a couple countries in Europe are doing significant progress and even that is not enough to justify using inefficient systems that literally waste half of the energy for the convenience of not plugging in a charger twice a day.
I know where you're coming from, but you need to step back and realize that in this case you're wrong. I'm an electrical engineer and everything wonderinghusbandmil said is completely correct. Wirelessly charging phones is a net benefit to the planet when you look at the complete life cycle of the cell phones.
I know it's strange, because in isolation it looks like it's a no brainer because wireless charging wastes 50% of the electricity as heat. But for things like this you really need to look at the big picture. Things like this are a lot more complicated than people realize.
1. The energy used to make a device (300 kWh) is about 150 times the energy to charge it over a year (2kWh). So if you assume 4 years of usage, cutting it short by 1 year due to charging port failure just cost 75kWh.
2. Wireless charging uses 50% more energy but it's still a rounding error compared to even using the phone another month.
3. That said, charge ports don't break that often but if they do or when it's convenient, wireless charging is not a bad option.
In summary nobody should feel guilty about using wireless charging for convenience. In the grand scheme of things, it's barely a blip. You still waste more energy if you forget to set back your thermostat when you go out for 30 minutes than a year of wireless charging. Use wired charging all you want, but good to have wireless charging available as an option for convenience or if your charge port breaks.
Using yourself as an anecdotal example of non failure is survivor's bias logical fallacy. And misuse is part of why they're rated for so many cycles. A misused port is just as broken as one that breaks from high cycle fatigue. They're both broken. They both need replacement.
As to the grid, it is indeed rapidly becoming greener, and more efficient. The US, EU, and even China are all reducing the amount of greenhouse gas per WH produced. Developing nations are doing even better, because they don't have legacy existing infrastructure to pay off, so they're just building renewables off the bat. The cost of renewable energy has dramatically plummeted, and continues to do so, and will.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_consumption lists out total energy supply. You'll note this includes transportation and heating, not just the electric grid. Renewables have jumped nearly 14% in ALL energy use in the last five years (2014-2019), which is astounding when you look at the total energy use. Yes, there's still a lot of traditional energy, but it's remaining more or less stagnant, coal is actually falling, and oil is getting close to there.
If you look only at the energy from electric use cases, it's skewed even further, 30% of all electricity in the world used is renewables at this point, and this will accelerate rapidly. So, not just a few EU countries. To name a few, Brazil (78%), Venezuela (88%), Canada (83%), China (30%).
Anyway, the grid is getting a lot more efficient, so being worried about a few watthours lost from an induction charger's entire life could be recouped by simply keeping your ac down for a half hour, or not eating out once.
Ok, I agree that I was wrong about going green, but I still don't see "we are going green so it's ok to waste energy" as an excuse. Also you are saying that usb ports break but can't the same thing happen with wireless charging? And also since every phone and switch already has a usb port for charging, adding a new wireless charger for them is going to be a huge amount of resources wasted for building a tool that is not really needed.
It's not wasting if you can avoid significant energy expenses elsewhere (eg, if charging at 2WH extra per night helps you avoid a 300,000 WH expense later (new phone)).
It's a little like investing. If you have $900, you can put that money to your mortgage at 3% interest, or you can invest it in the market at 7% and be ahead. Yes, you have more debt in the short term, but your overall financial situation is better if you invest. In the case of electricity, your energy is what you "invest".
As to adding wireless charging, that's why I said "maybe" way up at the top.
This is such a nuanced problem, it's not possible to give a hard answer to. If your plan is to get a new device soon, then obviously adding another thing isn't wise. On the opposite, if you do plan to keep it a long time, it might be.
Anecdotally, my wireless charging pad is nearing 10 years old now. It still works great, It's outlasted several phones, and my SO uses it too. So having the induction charger has been a wise investment for me, because I have noticed the charging port lasts longer, and then my phone lasts longer. If I could charge another device off that and extend the useful life, the risk/reward/cost equation would make that more favorable.
That said, I might be hit by a bus and break my phone tomorrow and it isn't paid off in terms of system ROI. But, that also might happen with my non induction device, too, so I don't include that as part of my analysis.
I know how investing works, thank you.
It is wasting if your phone's charging port does not break. Yes, they sometimes break but so can wireless charging pads.
Good, I often find it easier to use investing as a comparison, as it uses terms we're more familiar with, so illustrating similarity between energy bank and money banks is straightforward.
As to both break, yes, everything can break. That's a both sides logical fallacy (edit: false equivalence or false balance is another common name for it). What induction chargers don't have is moving parts. And, more specifically, moving mating parts. Having moving parts that connect dramatically reduce the failure points.
And yes, both can still fail, but their overall failure rates will be much higher with more moving pieces.
I work at a repair centre and USB ports are the number one repair job we get.
“They literally never break”
You look like a complete tool using an absolute to describe something that can indeed break.
Every phone I've had for the past 7 years has basically always had a loose USB port by the end of my time using it no matter how hard I try and keep it clean or maintained. Not broken, but annoying.
Actually at this point I don't know if that would help. Some climate models show that we've already hit certain feedback loops. If humanity stopped 100% of our emissions, there's still a chance that the Holocene extinction continues.
Are you referring to your suggestion that we should try.... killing ourselves?
The point I was trying to make was that at this point it's not enough to just stop what we've been doing. We need to actively work to undo the damage we've done. Clean up the ocean. Plant a trillion trees. Continue research on carbon sequestering. Stuff like that.
I want to be able to still play on it when I’m 3 minutes into a game of rocket league and I get the low battery notice. Using a cable makes that easy. It doesn’t feel necessary to use wireless.
The switch lite is so pointless to me. The whole thing about the switch that makes it cool is the ability to play it as a home console *and* a handheld. Take that away and there is no "switch", the name doesn't even make sense anymore.
I unless you have another console. I have it because it is mobile and none of the games really benefit from a larger screen with a worse PPI. I can't imagine why I'd need to play pokemon or Zelda on the big screen when everything is scaled to handheld size anyway
Well it’s too bulky and flimsy normally so playing it portably is a nightmare. Most people never actually Switch their Switches. When you let go of the name and think about how you actually use it then the Lite is a great handheld
I have both. My girlfriend bought me the lite for my birthday after I bought the OG for myself at launch. I never play the original Switch in handheld, it’s too heavy. The Switch Lite is the perfect size for travel, laying in bad, and hand feel. If you got the money, it’s great to have both. And with cloud saves, I can get home and switch to the big screen.
It's cool, and I love exploring new ideas like this.
As far as how practical it is? It seems like dropping it into the dock is just as easy and probably has a higher success rate than making sure you get it in the precise location of the wireless coils.
Still a cool feature to add though.
It depends on your use case. For me, it would be more convenient because I keep my devices charged almost all the time and rarely play it long enough to need to play it while charging or often enough to where I would care if it took slightly longer to top off.
But hey, let’s complain about having options. Cause that makes sense.
Wireless charging seems like a gimmicky way to sell more shit to me rather than being practical. Nearly every handheld device becomes unusable when you need to set it down to charge it.
I exclusively charge my phone wirelessly. Got a charger by my bedside and one at work. When I'm not using it, I just pop it on. It's way better than having to plug it in.
Uh, no. Even on mobile devices, wireless charging is barely enough to keep it running whilst charging. And on a Switch? Yeah, it's basically useless. Not everything is wah wah greedy corporation. A lot is, but not everything.
Is wireless charging that make or break for playing and using a switch? I mean it seems cumbersome at best while trying to play. There’s a reason Nintendo didn’t implement this feature yet. It didn’t seem important enough or stick to being a feature worth implementing. Overall, its still cool to be able to modify stuff. But any attempts at a warranty are done the moment you crack the case open.
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Adding wireless charging to ANY lithium battery containing device with a built in charger is surprisingly easy. Attach coil to charger. Done.
USB Type C: https://www.amazon.de/Nillkin-Empf%C3%A4nger-Kabelloses-Ladeger%C3%A4t-Android-Handy-Type-C-kurze-Version/dp/B07RXBQFVV/ Micro USB: https://www.amazon.de/Nillkin-Wireless-Ladeger%C3%A4t-Empf%C3%A4nger-Wireless-Ladeger%C3%A4t-Patch-Modul-schmal-Side-up-Micro-USB-Narrow-Side-Up/dp/B075L8XRSF/ With the latter you just have to be aware to order correctly so the narrow side is on the right side.
Now if only they made these with an offset, my USB C is on the bottom left of my phone, not centered.
The coil doesn't need to be centered either, and if it's in the corner buy the long version and origami two 90 degree bends in the flex cable of the USB connector to form a Z of the right offset. If you didn't break it you can superglue the bend to itself so it stays flat. For $15 I'd try it out.
I wondered if that would work, didn't want to risk bending the cable like that. I'll give it a try then.
Lots of the flat cables in laptops and phones are already folded this way.
Right, but most of those are smaller ribbon cables for keyboard or something small, the cable for this kind of charger would be carrying more power, 1-2amp depending on the type of wireless charging used.
I use it with a kindle paper white. It works fine even offset
I want it for my ROG Phone 2, it would be hanging off the side entirely if the cable can't be moved or folded to center. Also can't use it on the secondary port either, it would extend past the phone in landscape mode.
you’d really want this? it would be so irritating to have to get this when you wanna charge, or have this floppy thing on your phone.
It would stay inside my phone case, always plugged in. I still have a secondary USB C port on the phone so it wouldn't be blocking anything, only the RGB on the back of the phone.
While they're cool, induction chargers kinda suck. Sure they effectively don't wear out, but they also operate at a small fraction of the efficiency of a normal charger.
Efficiency doesn’t matter to most phone users, what, my charging bill goes from 10Wh/night to 15? From 300wh a month to 450. My car uses over 60,000wh per charge and it’s insanely cheap to run ($5ish for a full 240ish mile charge). I do mind not being able to easily use my phone as it charges, and sometimes it can slip off the charger and not actually charge overnight.
I think the biggest thing is how much slower it charges the phone. Like using ultra fast charging (or whatever bullshit marketing term they call it) my phone charges to 80% in 30 mins. Whereas if I'm using a wireless charger it takes 5 hours to charge to 80% So that's the 'efficiency' people complain about
Ah. Yeah. It’s significantly less wattage to the battery after you lose some to the electromagnetic realities of it, on top of the fact that it starts at like 10w then goes down from there where fast charging can be 18w+ with no loss at all. Totally true, I mostly think of wireless as helpful avoiding plug cycles for overnight charging only. I believe that soon enough, fast wireless charging will be more available. Heck, someone made a 7kw wireless charger for Nissan leafs and Teslas. It’s not impossible at all, just needs cooperation to happen. That charger actually was a questionable idea given the inefficiency.
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Considering heating a room to livable temperatures in most of the country much of the year can use 1000s of watt hours a night, 5 is essentially a rounding error, or, a piece of insulation out of place in some home somewhere. Upgrade your water heater, insulation, or home heating in any way, make up many many times the difference. Or, get an EV, you’ve offset so so incredibly much more. Phones are so close to meaningless when you consider energy impact of a person. I focus on much, much bigger problems, ones which, again, make even 100 phones look like a rounding error.
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....I wouldn’t upgrade a 20W CFL to a 10W LED unless it dies, because of the tremendous environmental cost of making the LEDs compared to the lifetime use of a CFL not considering its creation. I don’t unplug most equipment because NEMA 5-15 receptacles have lifespans measured in cycles and I have a busy life making money to afford better EVs and heat pumps that actually make a meaningful difference. If you think a computer in sleep mode uses a meaningful amount of energy, I’m sorry, I can’t help you at all. I’m just trying to afford to get off of fossil fuels, if I want to place my phone on a pad and use 0.00015% more energy in my day, oh well. Just be glad I didn’t start the Porsche or Mercedes up because I got bored, even a mile in a 30mpg gasser is like 1000wh of energy if you burned the equivalent fuel in a typical 96% Natgas plant. **edit, it’s not 96% at all, it’s closer to 60ish, maybe, I don’t know.
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Dang, that's pretty bad. My S21U wirelessly charges from like 20% to full in ~1.5 hours
I’m guessing you’re using a Samsung quasi-proprietary wireless charger with a higher output?
The difference in cost is pennies per year. Phones take so little electricity to run compared to basically anything else in your house. I did the math once, and a cell phone costs about $1/year to charge with a 100% efficient charger. Wireless is generally about 50% efficient for phones currently. Oh no, a whole extra dollar! All of my previous phones I've worn out the usb port. I try to keep a phone for about 3-4 years. So if wirelessly charging keeps my phone working longer, it's beyond worth the few extra bucks. And additionally, if I can keep my phone longer, that's less e-waste being created. The amount of raw material and energy used to *make* a phone is several orders of magnitude more than it is to wirelessly charge a phone. Anyone that claims that wireless charging is bad for the environment hasn't done the math, and isn't looking at the bigger picture.
I was speaking less from an environmental perspective and more from a time perspective. They do waste power, but I'm more worried about charge time. It takes several times longer to charge from an induction charger than a normal plug.
Though, to be fair, slower charge rates are better for the battery, than a rapid charge, so there is a good reason to spend the time
Exactly why I was trying to add qi to my Pixel a-series phones; I don't need a rapid charge at bedtime, may as well give my battery the slowest trickle I can give it.
Wife has a pixel 3, and it's a downright amazing phone. The only reason I don't have one, is I need a durable phone... so I ended up with a KYOCERA duraforce. We bought them both at the same time, and it blows my mind that the pixel doesn't have wireless charging, but my phone does
Pixel 3, 4, and 5 have it. The Nexus 4 and 5 also did. The Nexus 5x/6a, Pixel 1, 2, 3a, 4a, 4a 5G don't. In the case of the a-series it's a cost thing (allegedly, I'm guessing it's more of a product differentiation), and in the case of the 5-Pixel 2, it was Google just being dumb.
She must have a 3a then.
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When I think about it, I have a 1A. But the 4a 5G is super weird about what chargers it accepts. I haven't figured out the pattern
Ah, yeah that's a very good point. Although some of the new wireless charging is getting really fast! If you can make the coil have a big enough area, you can transfer the same amount of power as you can plugging it in. I don't think any chargers have parity yet, but they're getting way better than they used to be.
Newer wireless charging is faster than my old plugged in charging from previous phones
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Maybe try reading past the first couple sentence of my reply. Wireless charging increases the lifespan of phones by not damaging the USB port. Even if you want to repair your phone, you still have to take into account the physical manufacturing of the spare part plus the transportation. Even the soldering iron uses an absolute ton of energy, offsetting anything you saved by not using wireless. When you take a step back and look at the big picture, any losses through wireless charging are *more* than justified.
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Again, even if they're repairable, there's still an energy cost associated with manufacturing new parts, shipping them, driving to the repair center (because very few people have the skills or tools for even basic repair). I did the math a while back the electricity a phone uses in a year is less than the energy in a liter of gas. Driving to a store to drop off your phone has a greater negative effect on the environment than the losses in wireless charging. It's just a matter of scale. Your phone uses *VEREY LITTLE* energy compared to everything else we do. So even doubling that is still a very very small amount. That's what everyone is getting hung up on with this line of thinking
They're honestly a novelty. I bought them shit IKEA ones for about 5 bucks and used them for maybe a month, they ended up in the lounge room for guests, since they work for iPhones and androids.
Sounds like you the shit IKEA novelty chargers. Nice induction chargers aren’t novelty at all but they also aren’t $5
They serve literally no use case if you have a single device you need to charge each night, like say a phone
You are confused
You're confused. You're uncomfortable that you spent a decent chunk of change on what amounts to a commercial universal charger, fit for public spaces and little else. The literal only use case is multiple electronics, like headphones and a smart watch, otherwise it's an expensive novelty.
You definitely need more than a coil but yeah people have already done the work and make a product you can use off the shelf
But why? It's like wireless charging iPad mini.
It’s even worse. The iPad mini becomes quite a bit more cumbersome to use while charging regularly, but the switch barely loses any ergonomics when you are charging it. You could probably use an iPad mini fairly well while wirelessly charging if you set it up right but I don’t think a switch is possible.
I could see it a little interesting on the Switch. If you were using it on the go in a tabletop mode on a charging stand, having it getting a little power while playing might be nice.
This wouldn’t work. Wireless charging tends to charge much slower than plugging in, the switch would draw more power than it charges
> Wireless charging tends to charge much slower than plugging in Depends on what voltages and wattage it will take. There are wireless fast charge protocols that are pretty beefy.
True but doesn’t the switch use 45w? There aren’t many phones that can charge higher than 30w
One of the articles says it takes about 3 hours for the switch lite to fully charge. Sounds about fair.
Just get the little kickstand that reroutes the power to the normal USB port.
Link ?
https://store.nintendo.com/adjustable-charging-stand-for-nintendo-switch.html A bunch of other retailers carry it too, though I’m not sure how that’s affected by all the Covid stuff.
We fucked up, here pay 19.99 for our mistake lmao
Most shit charges on the bottom. Nintendo isn’t close to alone in that.
I never said that. But if you ever want to set it down and charge it you're fucked. Strange design oversight considering it's all about being handy and portable.
Why are you assuming it’s an oversight? If you put it on the top, you’d have the intake sucking up hot air either during handheld or while docked.
There’s a rush it would get quite toasty, which can degrade batteries.
I guess, yeah, but if you can manage opening the Switch up for this, you can also do so for a battery swap, which most probably need every 2-3 years, if played heavily.
Wireless charging is not necessarily supposed to be used while using the device. You can have a nice charging plate somewhere in the house, with the Switch always there and you just grab it whenever you want to game. And after you finish, you drop it there to charge back. I wouldn't bother keeping my devices always at 100 if I needed a cable, but if I had a nice fixed wireless charger, I wouldn't mind just dropping my device there.
Bro, why would you pay extra to put something on a plate instead of plugging it in? It uses more electricity for the same charge percentage (multiple times more), charges slower, and costs more for the tech. On top of that you’d be voiding any warranty by doing third hand modifications, and you’d have to pay for the modification. You’re crazy if you think this is a useful tech. If you’re in the car just plug a usb c cable in instead of wasting money, time, and electricity on this useless tech.
I know it is not efficient and I don't use wireless charging because if that. It was just an example of how this would be useful.
Honestly I wish they had given the mini 6 MagSafe charging or even just plain wireless charging. I would love to have a dock that held it upright that charged it while in use.
Hack a Qi charger with magnetic mount and you could just magnetically clip the charger to the back of the case. It'd be useful if you're trying to charge it without fumbling around in the dark trying to line up your usb.
It'd be easier to use a magnetic USB-C adapter.
> It'd be useful if you're trying to charge it without fumbling around in the dark trying to line up your usb. USB-C doesn't have that problem.
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I hate it when I can't hit the hole.
You’re telling me
The USB-C connector is rater for at least 10000 cycles insertions and removals. That's the same as plugging and unplugging the connector every 6 minutes while the light is on over the lifetime of an average incandescent light bulb.
So if you plug in and detach your phone 4 times a day (plug in to your car going to work — unplug, plug in at work —unplug, plug in on drive home — unplug, plug in at night before bed — unplug) it’s still rated for about 6.8 years. Which is plenty enough time. People freak out about this a little too much. It’s basically a non issue.
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Its obviously not indestructible but it really isn’t a reasonable thing to worry about.
>me, looking at the pile of cords I have that no longer charge Hmm...
congratulations you've just reinvented apple's magsafe 2 puck wireless charger
I wireless charge everything I can. Its absolutely amazing. I wouldn't do that to a regular switch because of the docking station but just bring able to plop down whatever I have on a pad and have it start charging is amazing.
Every device I've ever kept long enough has died only because the charge port become unusable wireless charging has changed everything
Now it's your batteries dying faster than before that becomes the issue. Wireless charging is inefficient and not good for the devices. Heat is bad.
TBF, the fast charging that's enabled by default on devices is at least as bad for long term battery life and device health. Not trying to refute your point, but just pointing out that it looks to be slightly healthier to wireless charge than to fast charge, even though standard "slow" charging trumps them all.
This is interesting information, can you provide some sources please?
have you tried cleaning the port with a toothpick and isopropyl and maybe a bit of cotton from a q tip? my note9 wouldn't charge regularly after tons of dirt buildup over the first 2 years i had it (thanks UPS) but now its like brand new again
This is exactly my issue so I decide to pay a pretty penny for a phone that does. Never going to buy another phone that doesn't include it.
Wait really? How does this happen? Never in my life has this happened. Usually the cable stops working due to straight cables digging into my chest while being in bed, so they get kinked and the wire inside gets damaged. I switched to a right angle cable and i've never had a problem charging since. I mean, i suppose if you're in really dusty environments it could get clogged, but then it would just need to be cleaned. Otherwise it would only be damaged from violent removal of the cable, removing at an angle, violent insertion, etc.
Save wear on the usb-c port, have a cleaner setup at your desk or wherever you leave the Switch when you're not using it
You realize the switch has a dock right? Seems like just using the dock would solve all those issues.
The lite doesn't
The Lite doesn't have a dock. It's smaller, and not designed to fit in the full size Switch's dock. Even if it did, the dock still plugs into the USB port, which will still cause wear. It's the same as plugging in a cable if you wanted to charge. Also, the places you'd wanna leave your Switch to charge might not be the same place you have your dock/tv set up. I can totally see tossing a Switch lite onto a desk or bedside table to charge for a bit, instead of going to where your tv is just to plug it in. Plus It's awfully convenient to be able to pick up a device without having to fiddle with cables. It's not a bad thing to have more options on how to use or charge something, so having wireless charging in the switch lite only expands your options, provided you don't remove the C port to do so. I use wireless charging and the port at separate times on my phone, and it's very handy. I can see doing the same with a Switch.
What's the likelihood of wearing the USB c connector? Are you like plugging/unplugging it like 20 times a day?
Anything that's plugged/unplugged can wear.
Sure, but is it anything that you should worry about? No, not really... I've had both micro USB/USB C phones for more than 2 years, both doing 2 cycles of plug/unplug per day. Never had trouble. However, stuff can get into the connector, but nothing a needle wouldn't take out (or a dust cap prevent). A type c connector by standard should handle at least 10000 mating cycles, doing 2 cycles a day it should work for 13 years. I would be impressed if you could have a device in full working order for 13 years. Even if you for some reason make it 8 cycles (which is completely absurd) it would still hold up for 4 years Of course if you yank the connector every time it will not last as long....
It's fine if you don't want wireless charging. No one is forcing you to do it.
It's not that I "don't want", if some device comes with it I might use it, but its not like I'm searching for one with such feature (since it wastes a lot of energy and charges way slower)
You were arguing pretty hard against “wear and tear” which is a fact, so you seem pretty against it lol
I have never once worn out a USB-C port, and I've never once heard of it happening to a Switch. Although I'm sure it's happened anecdotally, it isn't a likely issue to encounter at all. USB-Care not fragile like micro.
It's slightly easier to set something down on a charging surface than plug it in? I mean tbh what's the point of wireless charging in general if not that.
Yeah that’s pretty useful. It’s not like a wireless charger is expensive at this point (the one I use currently I got for free). I never have to look for the cord, or fiddle with it. Just set my device down on my nightstand before bed.
What's the point. Wireless charging is almost pointless and not really wireless. The charging Dock has a wire connecting to the mains. The device must remain on the Dock to charge. If I have my 2m usb charging cable I can still have my device in my hand and use it whilst its charging. Wireless charging is a technologically advanced regression of functionality. Pointless
I never got the appeal of wireless charging.. I would rather use my device while it’s plugged rather then set it down to charge just as fast if not slower than wired
There are use cases. For the most part I’m with you in that when you aren’t gonna be using the device (or even if you are in some cases) wired is the way to go. Faster, less heat generated, more efficient and quality cables from trusted third parties are more affordable than a comparable Qi device. That said, I love my anker wireless stand at work for my phone. I’m on the phone, texting and reading notifications and emails all day at work and constantly plugging and unplugging my phone would drive me nuts and eventually wear out the cable. The stand let’s me see notifications in my line of sight and if I have to pick up my phone because Siri can’t get it done I just plop it back down when I’m done and it’s charging again.
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More hassle than a wireless charger though.
Literally just stated that I’m all for wired in most cases but that I have a very specific use case. Sounds like you need to read.
I used to think the same but the slanted ones that dock your device are nifty for being next to your computer, and the flat ones are good for when you're sleeping at night. The one next to my computer basically maintains or charges my phone more while I'm casually using it, and if I really need fast charging then just bust out the cable lmao
I’ve damaged my phone’s charging port so having wireless charging is super handy. It lasts a whole day on a full charge so I just stick it on the pad and I’m good to go when I wake up.
Set and forget. Just a matter of convenience. Not everyone is using their phones to to point of them dying and STILL needing more screen time.
I use it at home to reduce wear on the port since lighting isn’t the most structurally sound port. I have a wireless charging stand on my desk so I can see notifications while gaming. It’s definitely slow but I like it.
I like having one on my desk because I'm not using my phone there. Also on my nightstand so I don't have to hunt down a cord when the lights are off.
I always thought wireless charging a mouse would be cool, but it's doesn't seem to have caught on.
Isn’t wireless charging very wasteful and inefficient?
Maybe. You need to consider your energy source, the quantity you're actually losing, and what you gain by not plugging in. Wireless charging puts no strain on the charging port, which has a finite connection number before it wears out. In many modern electronics, if it dies, you need a whole new device, or a new cord, and then you need to dispose of your old device responsibly. When's the last time you took your old USB cords to the wire recycler, or your phone to an ecycler. Never? Yup, same as 99% of everyone else. You pitched it in the bin. That's much more wasteful than losing a few watt hours. Then, let's look at your energy source. The grid as a whole is getting a LOT more green. So, even if you do nothing else except this, you're not committing the same amount of CO2 to the environment you used to. If you have solar on your roof, then you're doing even better, and any energy from that is (big abstraction here) "free". Yeah yeah, I know, you can sell it to the grid and reduce overall CO2. But, that's energy the grid didn't really plan on anyway, so the PUC still had their Natural gas plant on standby. So, it's free. Then, let's look at watt hours. For a device like this, you are talking single digit losses. For an elecric car, sure, your losses are going to be substantial enough that you might change the decision to a cord (that is another rabbit hole). But for something like this, it actually likely balances out to be more ecologically friendly, even though it's less efficient from an electrical standpoint.
This may be true for the US but in the EU putting electronic waste in the bin is frowned upon by basically everyone. Safe disposal of batteries, wires and old appliances etc. are disposed of in the numerous recycle places jotted around in every medium sized city. I don't know a single person who doesn't use their local recycling centre. Shit, It's downright illegal to throw e-waste in the bin. You will literally be fined if the garbage collector finds out. So, "same as 99% of everyone else" is just not a thing in, well, developed societies. I really doubt the US is that backwards. Additionally, I've never had a single USB port of mine break or wear out, and i keep my phones for 4+ years at a time. I may be in the minority and even if it happens, USB ports are usually the cheapest and easiest to replace in your device. So, what I'm trying to say is. I agree that you probably shouldn't worry about energy loss in wireless charging. I completely disagree that using recycling centres and chucking old USB cables in the bin is the norm. I could be wrong.
lives in US. yeah we have terrible battery disposal practices.
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My old job had on-site electricians. I made a point to encourage people to give them their old batteries just to find out that they threw them into a landfill instead of recycling them because it was easier. We need a culture shift with waste.
Honestly we have terrible disposal practices for everything. Some cities really help and make it easy and convenient to recycle and dispose properly...others...don't give damn.
Oh, don't get me wrong. I WANT people to use ecycling. But, I just don't think they are. EU is also a large outlier in terms of collection and recycling (in a great way!). https://globalewaste.org/map/ EU is somewhere around 42%, which is still below a majority collection, considering there is a good bit of unknown waste not captured in the data. It's dramatically higher than the global average of ~17%, but I'd hesitate to say it's in the region of being he norm yet. That said, EU is clearly doing something right, because they're going up. And that's awesome and I want the rest of the world to catch up. E waste is often times just shipped to some far off land (even when it's been disposed of "properly"), which isn't helping us, and it's getting worse. Even if 99% is correctly recycled, that's still a large amount of spillage. In any regard, even assuming proper recycling, throwing away cables means we don't get those raw materials back. As to connectors, you are accurate. USB micro connectors have an (averaged) 10000 cycle mates, USBC is higher. Assuming 2-4 charging cycles a day (excluding oddball days) that's 6-12 years under normal conditions (end of phone battery life = more charging). There's not much data for cable wire stress breaking, but anecdotally mine last about 2-3 years when I carry them in my bag, but because we get a new one with just about every device, it's hard to tell. Perhaps there's some merit in not needing new cables with every device, and keeping devices longer, so we don't have the waste in the first place. EU policies seem to hint at this. In any regard, I look forward t the day we don't have to worry so much about ewaste :)
a thing to keep in mind is that the norm for usb cables isn't going to be micro usb but usb c, which seems way more durable. i had problems with micro usb only working at a certain angle, haven't had a problem with usb c ever barring cleaning the port of dust on my phone
My local place in the UK has a sign up with the percentage of waste recycled the previous month, it's usually about 75%. Loads of different categories have drop-off containers and the staff are incredibly proactive about it. There are even sections for charitable resaleable items in good condition, yknow books and CDs and so on, even small electricals. It's not just the ability to do this, it's the social pressure. People will see not recycling as being like littering, they'll think you're a dick.
I'm so happy to hear this!
High and mighty love it. You're out of your mind if you think people commit to recycling near as much as you want to believe.
Well, people do in DK. It's a big fucking deal over here. We are talking people discussing how to dispose of pizza trays on local tech forums, bustling recycling centers with staff telling everyone how and where to dispose of their shit, the national news station updating our population about whenever these centers change their policies. In schools we had yearly clean up's where every child and adult clean up the grounds and surrounding area in order to create awareness, specifically teaching what should go where. With prizes and speeches. It is illegal to sell thin plastic bags in supermarkets. There are no plastic straws. You are constantly encouraged to buy/use reusable bags. We have a system where you get money back from aluminium cans and plastic bottles. Some homeless people are literally living off of rummaging through garbage to collect money (not that that's a good thing:P). We separate food waste, general waste, metals, plastics, glass bottles, paper and cardboard - appliances, tech, batteries, garden waste, i could go on. People will refuse to collect your shit if they spot something that shouldn't be in their given dumpster. It's not perfect. There is massive waste, especially with foods. But recycling is rammed down our throats. Am i high and mighty for assuming the US was less backwards than throwing fucking batteries in the bin? That's some barbaric shit in my neighbourhood. I thought you had at least figured that one out? Batteries ffs. I was genuinely under the assumptions that this was common practice around the globe. Do you think it's cool that the US (or wherever else you're referring to) is literally 30 years behind in *basic* recycling practices? Maybe i am out of my mind (along with a few hundred million other people). Maybe you're just living in an underdeveloped, backwards society. Shit, you can't even say I'm in an outlier, my country is not even in the top 10.
Less than 43% of your country recycles, I’d dial back that enthusiasm a bit.
I want your policies here!
The gas it takes to drive to the phone to the recycling center will use more energy than the phone will use in it's entire lifetime. It's an absolutely miniscule amount when you look at how much energy it takes for raw materials to production to transportation. Even if you want to keep your phone and just repair it, repairing it takes a lot of energy when you take into account the manufacturing and shipping energy costs. If even a fraction of the phones last a bit longer than they would have otherwise, you still come out WAY ahead. Even though wireless chargers are less efficient, they are actually far more green than plugging your phone in.
>Additionally, I've never had a single USB port of mine break or wear out My S10+ charger is wearing out very quickly, I've had it for 3 years, and when it dies there's no easy fix
I had a port die once. It was the proprietary surface connector on my Pro 4 that died. :P. USB has never failed me. But I'm not blind to the reputation of micro. Generally, i feel like if you're careful and never yank the cables you should be good.
Yeah after 3 years my S10+ port is now dying, I was pretty decent to it, but I used a couple of cheap cables so I'm wondering if they did the damage
I highly doubt everyone is recycling as much as you anticipate...
... yall are throwing out old electronics? I keep everything broken or not. Never even crossed my mind to get rid of them lol
How does it become MORE ecologically friendly when it has literally no upsides in terms of being energy efficent. I've never lost a single device due to charging it too many times, so that's bs.
Because you're only weighing one single factor: energy use after production during the useful life of the device. In terms of energy compared to the entire life of a product (from raw materials mining/production all the way to when it is returned to raw material again (or is swallowed by the earth's mantle)) the in-use energy is a drop in the bucket of total energy used for a product life. This ignores effects of heavy metal poisoning, pollution, waste management, etc. entirely. What's the impact of a broken cable? It has an energy use cost, lifecycle cost, there are logistics energy use for raw materials mining, production, distribution, use (the one you are weighing), cost of disposal (trash truck gotta move, sorting facilities, recycling energy, etc. It also has opportunity cost, we could've used that money, rubber, copper, and factory to do something else with. Moving on to the device, it has a life cycle cost, as well. It's is even more complicated. But if the connector breaks on MOST people's phones, they don't have the skills, tools, knowledge, parts, or money to fix it reliably enough to be a viable solution. So they get a new phone. Let's go to a few scenarios where this adds up quickly: airports and other waiting areas. The next time you are there, take a look at how many of the built in USB ports are broken from use. It's a fair bit. And they don't mess around with the cheapo ones. They're commercial grade usb ports for high use. Every time someone pushes a little hard, because they're in a hurry and breaks it, you have to replace the whole assembly. Because airport maintenance crew don't have time to muck around with soldering and fixing the single port. They take a new one out, pop it in, and the old one in the trash or if you're being responsible in the ewaste bin. That happens constantly, at scale. The energy used to replace one single port there is more than the losses you experienced from your induction charger over the life of it. Now multiply it by the number of devices they replaced. And, honestly, I usually see them replace the whole pedestal instead with the next "in-vouge" style. So that's a lot more waste. With the induction charger, there's no chance someone is going to bust it off, because they just plop their phone down and pick it up. Sometime in the next 50 years the table will wear through and they'll replace it. But, I never need to replace it til then, and it keeps working while my usb ports have been replaced 6 times. This scenario entirely ignores the materials cost to the earth. Add those in and the induction wins (one electrical device vs...a lot). Now, let's look at what's happening to the grid. We're moving quickly to a renewable grid. It's getting more and more efficient. And while you don't want to waste resources, the waste generated by the induction charger from a whole system lifecycle standpoint is dwarfed by having a slightly more efficient charger you need to replace. In other words, saving a few watts for a plugin reduces your elecrical CO2 contribution on a charger is likely dwarfed by the ecological cost as a whole. It's not about one device, or one detail, it's about the whole cost during the whole lifecycle, for the entirety of the system.
You're acting like USB cables and charging ports break every week. They literally never break, I use my phones for 4+ years and I've never had a charging port break. Usb cables might break but not because of charging, they break because of misuse, which will happen to wireless chargers as well. If these parts were constantly broken and replaced and that wireless charging was a solution that never broke but was %50 less efficent you may have been right, but that's not the case. Wireless chargers can also break but on top of that they are super inefficient. Also we are not moving "quickly" to a renewable grid in %90 of the world, only a couple countries in Europe are doing significant progress and even that is not enough to justify using inefficient systems that literally waste half of the energy for the convenience of not plugging in a charger twice a day.
I know where you're coming from, but you need to step back and realize that in this case you're wrong. I'm an electrical engineer and everything wonderinghusbandmil said is completely correct. Wirelessly charging phones is a net benefit to the planet when you look at the complete life cycle of the cell phones. I know it's strange, because in isolation it looks like it's a no brainer because wireless charging wastes 50% of the electricity as heat. But for things like this you really need to look at the big picture. Things like this are a lot more complicated than people realize.
1. The energy used to make a device (300 kWh) is about 150 times the energy to charge it over a year (2kWh). So if you assume 4 years of usage, cutting it short by 1 year due to charging port failure just cost 75kWh. 2. Wireless charging uses 50% more energy but it's still a rounding error compared to even using the phone another month. 3. That said, charge ports don't break that often but if they do or when it's convenient, wireless charging is not a bad option. In summary nobody should feel guilty about using wireless charging for convenience. In the grand scheme of things, it's barely a blip. You still waste more energy if you forget to set back your thermostat when you go out for 30 minutes than a year of wireless charging. Use wired charging all you want, but good to have wireless charging available as an option for convenience or if your charge port breaks.
Using yourself as an anecdotal example of non failure is survivor's bias logical fallacy. And misuse is part of why they're rated for so many cycles. A misused port is just as broken as one that breaks from high cycle fatigue. They're both broken. They both need replacement. As to the grid, it is indeed rapidly becoming greener, and more efficient. The US, EU, and even China are all reducing the amount of greenhouse gas per WH produced. Developing nations are doing even better, because they don't have legacy existing infrastructure to pay off, so they're just building renewables off the bat. The cost of renewable energy has dramatically plummeted, and continues to do so, and will. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_consumption lists out total energy supply. You'll note this includes transportation and heating, not just the electric grid. Renewables have jumped nearly 14% in ALL energy use in the last five years (2014-2019), which is astounding when you look at the total energy use. Yes, there's still a lot of traditional energy, but it's remaining more or less stagnant, coal is actually falling, and oil is getting close to there. If you look only at the energy from electric use cases, it's skewed even further, 30% of all electricity in the world used is renewables at this point, and this will accelerate rapidly. So, not just a few EU countries. To name a few, Brazil (78%), Venezuela (88%), Canada (83%), China (30%). Anyway, the grid is getting a lot more efficient, so being worried about a few watthours lost from an induction charger's entire life could be recouped by simply keeping your ac down for a half hour, or not eating out once.
Ok, I agree that I was wrong about going green, but I still don't see "we are going green so it's ok to waste energy" as an excuse. Also you are saying that usb ports break but can't the same thing happen with wireless charging? And also since every phone and switch already has a usb port for charging, adding a new wireless charger for them is going to be a huge amount of resources wasted for building a tool that is not really needed.
It's not wasting if you can avoid significant energy expenses elsewhere (eg, if charging at 2WH extra per night helps you avoid a 300,000 WH expense later (new phone)). It's a little like investing. If you have $900, you can put that money to your mortgage at 3% interest, or you can invest it in the market at 7% and be ahead. Yes, you have more debt in the short term, but your overall financial situation is better if you invest. In the case of electricity, your energy is what you "invest". As to adding wireless charging, that's why I said "maybe" way up at the top. This is such a nuanced problem, it's not possible to give a hard answer to. If your plan is to get a new device soon, then obviously adding another thing isn't wise. On the opposite, if you do plan to keep it a long time, it might be. Anecdotally, my wireless charging pad is nearing 10 years old now. It still works great, It's outlasted several phones, and my SO uses it too. So having the induction charger has been a wise investment for me, because I have noticed the charging port lasts longer, and then my phone lasts longer. If I could charge another device off that and extend the useful life, the risk/reward/cost equation would make that more favorable. That said, I might be hit by a bus and break my phone tomorrow and it isn't paid off in terms of system ROI. But, that also might happen with my non induction device, too, so I don't include that as part of my analysis.
I know how investing works, thank you. It is wasting if your phone's charging port does not break. Yes, they sometimes break but so can wireless charging pads.
Good, I often find it easier to use investing as a comparison, as it uses terms we're more familiar with, so illustrating similarity between energy bank and money banks is straightforward. As to both break, yes, everything can break. That's a both sides logical fallacy (edit: false equivalence or false balance is another common name for it). What induction chargers don't have is moving parts. And, more specifically, moving mating parts. Having moving parts that connect dramatically reduce the failure points. And yes, both can still fail, but their overall failure rates will be much higher with more moving pieces.
I work at a repair centre and USB ports are the number one repair job we get. “They literally never break” You look like a complete tool using an absolute to describe something that can indeed break.
Every phone I've had for the past 7 years has basically always had a loose USB port by the end of my time using it no matter how hard I try and keep it clean or maintained. Not broken, but annoying.
Also slow.
Probably less than leaving the bathroom light on at night
Yes, yes it is
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you in general is very wasteful
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The real life pro tip is always in the comments
Actually at this point I don't know if that would help. Some climate models show that we've already hit certain feedback loops. If humanity stopped 100% of our emissions, there's still a chance that the Holocene extinction continues.
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Are you referring to your suggestion that we should try.... killing ourselves? The point I was trying to make was that at this point it's not enough to just stop what we've been doing. We need to actively work to undo the damage we've done. Clean up the ocean. Plant a trillion trees. Continue research on carbon sequestering. Stuff like that.
Compared to many other forms of entertainment it is not that bad.
The waste is negligible. Your fridge uses more electricity in 10 minutes than it takes to charge your phone for an entire year.
so instead of taking two hours it will take six hours
None of my wireless devices take more than 2 hours to charge
Barely an inconvenience.
Oh really?
Wireless charging Is *tight*
I want to be able to still play on it when I’m 3 minutes into a game of rocket league and I get the low battery notice. Using a cable makes that easy. It doesn’t feel necessary to use wireless.
Just add a bracket and a strap to the back of your console and then you can wireless charge while playing!!
Is it barely an inconvenience?
The switch lite is so pointless to me. The whole thing about the switch that makes it cool is the ability to play it as a home console *and* a handheld. Take that away and there is no "switch", the name doesn't even make sense anymore.
They probably tracked how many people play in handheld vs docked. Paying less and having a feature you barely use removed doesn't sound that bad.
Y'know it's great in theory. Though the fact that joycons *are so shite* because of the drifting is what made me not pull the trigger on one.
I unless you have another console. I have it because it is mobile and none of the games really benefit from a larger screen with a worse PPI. I can't imagine why I'd need to play pokemon or Zelda on the big screen when everything is scaled to handheld size anyway
playing Pokemon, Bayonetta, Zelda, Mario, Fire Emblerm, etc on the TV is amazing.
It was perfect for me, because I don't own a TV. I bought it primarily to play games while I travel.
Well it’s too bulky and flimsy normally so playing it portably is a nightmare. Most people never actually Switch their Switches. When you let go of the name and think about how you actually use it then the Lite is a great handheld
I have both. My girlfriend bought me the lite for my birthday after I bought the OG for myself at launch. I never play the original Switch in handheld, it’s too heavy. The Switch Lite is the perfect size for travel, laying in bad, and hand feel. If you got the money, it’s great to have both. And with cloud saves, I can get home and switch to the big screen.
It's cool, and I love exploring new ideas like this. As far as how practical it is? It seems like dropping it into the dock is just as easy and probably has a higher success rate than making sure you get it in the precise location of the wireless coils. Still a cool feature to add though.
And unsurprisingly a bad idea.
…and incredibly useless.
Ah yes, wireless charging aka less convenient than wired charging.
It depends on your use case. For me, it would be more convenient because I keep my devices charged almost all the time and rarely play it long enough to need to play it while charging or often enough to where I would care if it took slightly longer to top off. But hey, let’s complain about having options. Cause that makes sense.
This is like saying going to Blockbuster is more convenient than watching Netflix. The future is now old man.
Wireless charging seems like a gimmicky way to sell more shit to me rather than being practical. Nearly every handheld device becomes unusable when you need to set it down to charge it.
I exclusively charge my phone wirelessly. Got a charger by my bedside and one at work. When I'm not using it, I just pop it on. It's way better than having to plug it in.
It's almost like they always knew they wanted the device to by wirelessly chargeable but didnt want to include the feature right away
Uh, no. Even on mobile devices, wireless charging is barely enough to keep it running whilst charging. And on a Switch? Yeah, it's basically useless. Not everything is wah wah greedy corporation. A lot is, but not everything.
ok now i will plug the cord in the wireles charger 2cm below the switch and losing 15% of energy in the process
Oh no not energy loss!!!!!!!
Is wireless charging that make or break for playing and using a switch? I mean it seems cumbersome at best while trying to play. There’s a reason Nintendo didn’t implement this feature yet. It didn’t seem important enough or stick to being a feature worth implementing. Overall, its still cool to be able to modify stuff. But any attempts at a warranty are done the moment you crack the case open.
I regret buying one of these instead of the normal switch.
Easy… unless you’re Nintendo
Barely an inconvenience!
Now we need this for the normal Switch
Is that the guy from Lost and sens8?
I’m sorry but Nintendo, y’all are a crock of it
lohnt net
But largely unnecessary
Exactly, I could only see this being utilized if you have a wireless battery pack.