[datadrivenangel]

12.7Wh per battery for the iPhone 14, times a billion iphones. Assume a worst case scenario of full battery usage per day per phone, which gives us 5 billion watts or 5 gigawatts.

Doubling that power use if everyone switched to low quality wireless charging (50%) would require another 5 gigawatts, or a few thousand more wind turbines.

Bigger than I thought in a worst case scenario, but still not too bad.

Especially if wireless charging prevents premature replacement by reducing port failure, as the embodied energy is estimated to to be the majority of the energy involved in the lifecycle of a smartphone.

[oceanplexian]

Running an Air Conditioner in a small room for an hour (~500Wh) uses the same energy an iPhone would take in ~40 complete charge/discharge cycles. Of course, the numbers look big when you scale them up but as a percentage of total energy use, it's marginal to non-existent.

[radlad]

> Especially if wireless charging prevents premature replacement by reducing port failure

Interesting. I wasn't aware this was a common problem? It's not something I'm used to hearing about as an Android user.

I'd be more interested in whether Magsafe or USB-C wears the battery out sooner.