[Buxato]

1. Always sad for me to know how much popular are wireless chargers, wasting 47% more energy aprox for charging the same as a wired charger. https://debugger.medium.com/wireless-charging-is-a-disaster-... (too much catastrophic conclusions in this article but that percentage is real, you could check it in another tests, articles, whatever ..)

2. Totally agree with that, if camera is fundamental for you maybe not the right choice.

3. They also take compromises to have an ethical production, try to guarantee there is no exploitation as much as they could, from the extraction of mineral, manufacturing ... (they didn't do it for all, but they are advancing as far as they could, also with all existing certifications for that, so it's normal that is expensive. So our choice to value that things, if we could afford it, or not.

[gruez]

>1. Always sad for me to know how much popular are wireless chargers, wasting 47% more energy aprox for charging the same as a wired charger. https://debugger.medium.com/wireless-charging-is-a-disaster-... (too much catastrophic conclusions in this article but that percentage is real, you could check it in another tests, articles, whatever ..)

The percentage value looks bad but how much is that in absolute terms? Using the figures from the article, wireless charging uses 6.75 Wh more per full charge. Assuming you charge that much every day, that's 2.46 kWh per year, or 42 cents at average US electricity prices[1]. I think that's a price worth paying for the convenience.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/data/averageenergyprices...

[GuB-42]

Maybe it is, but we are talking about the Fairphone. A phone that the company pitches as more eco-friendly than the competition. Lacking a feature that is known to be wasteful in terms of energy is fitting.

Maybe it is negligible, but I suspect that in the grand scheme of things, the whole "fair trade" thing is negligible too, it didn't stop the company from building on that. At least, it sends a good message.

[audunw]

Given the cost of the “wasted” electricity I think it’s reasonable to say that charging with wires could easily be more wasteful. All it takes is just that wireless charging saves ONE broken/worn-out component, and it’ll easily have saved the world an equivalent amount of resources. If it’s a screen (like cause someone accidentally pulls on the charging cable dropping the phone to the floor), it could equate to several phones over several years. Maybe you are careful, but others aren’t.

One giant caveat though: wireless charging could wear out the battery faster due to the heat generated. But fast charging over cable is also bad for the battery, and that’s becoming increasingly common. At least wireless is always slow charging

[hsbauauvhabzb]

What’s the environmental cost of USB charging assuming wear on the cable? I seem to naturally go through one per year, I have a friend whose pets love to destroy cables so I assume they go through more.

Electricity can be solar, meaning that it could be close enough to zero environmental impact - think 20 years from now when we’ve got our crap together when it comes to sustainable energy..

Edit: a point below comments on increased battery wear which I fully agree with.

[richwater]

How terrible are people treating their cables? That number is insane to me.

[hsbauauvhabzb]

Travel, among other things.

Wear on the phone side of the port should be considered too.

[GuB-42]

But usually, people don't travel with their wireless chargers, or if they do, their wireless charger wire will get the same bad treatment as their phone charging cable.

As for wear on the phone side, the good thing of having a Fairphone is that it is easily replaceable. But USB-C ports are also designed to be more robust than the cable. So unless there is a defect, it should last the life of the phone.

[globular-toast]

I travel with cables every day. The only cables I've ever broken were due to some accident like tripping over it or something. I'm talking like 1 or 2 in my entire life. I have never considered cables to be a consumable part.

How on earth does someone get through one a year? Are you using it as a rope? Copper isn't cheap but should last decades, not one lousy year.

[mcv]

I'm taking extra good care of the USB-C cable that came with my phone, because I know that USB-C standard is a mess and I don't trust the standard to be able to find a replacement that allows the extra fast charging. I've had it for 4.5 years now.

Apple cables are notoriously fragile, though.

[asolidtime1]

>> 1. Always sad for me to know how much popular are wireless chargers, wasting 47% more energy aprox for charging the same as a wired charger.

Sure, but compared to everything else we use, smartphones use almost no energy. The one I'm typing this on has a battery capacity of 12 wh; if you have a resistive electric water heater, standing in a hot shower during the winter for an extra second would offset half of that.

[delecti]

This nerd sniped me and I had to do the math to confirm, but you're right, at least depending on where you get your estimates and regional power costs. The energy equivalent between a cell phone and shower time is on the order of seconds.

My phone's battery is 4385 mAh @3.7V, or 0.016 kWh, and my power costs $0.1252/kWh, or about $0.002 per phone charge. Based on some super surface-level estimates from googling, a typical shower is about 2 gallon/min, and the cost to heat water is about $0.01-0.02 per gallon, meaning for me it's actually about 4 seconds of hot water per phone charge.

[wryanzimmerman]

And the parent comment said “47% wasted power … extra second … would offset half of that” and 47% of four seconds is about two, half of that is one second, so I’d say that was shockingly accurate, wow!

[asolidtime1]

Yeah, the math I did was for heating water by 50 kelvins for a 9 l/min showerhead, which in hindsight was probably overestimating it. It'd make sense if the actual answer for most people was 2-4 seconds

[sowbug]

Ouch! I already feel bad about shaving in the shower! That is an evocative way to put it.

[zlg_codes]

This is the one less eco-friendly thing I'm not letting go of. Hot showers are amazing.

[wizardwes]

Did see an interesting thing recently about mist showers. You run them hotter than a normal shower, but they also use significantly less water, and therefore energy. That's always something to consider.

[wkat4242]

But the lower amount of water flowing will make it harder to remove soap suds from the hair, leading to longer shower times unless you like dandruff :) for me that's the longest part of showering.

[fastball]

Shave your head, easy-peasy.

[chrisweekly]

Ice-cold showers are also amazing. And healthy!

[maegul]

> 1. Always sad for me to know how much popular are wireless chargers, wasting 47% more energy aprox for charging the same as a wired charger.

Lots of sibling replies pointing out that the absolute energy loss is negligible and reasonable price for the convenience.

That’s fine.

But there’s a bigger point. This convenience is being used as a justification for sticking with big brand phones. Which maybe tips the balance on the reasonableness, and, more broadly, raises the general issue of how much buying for convenience is a slippery slope. Maybe just charge with a cable?

[fnord123]

But sowbug has 10 dollar wireless charging pads all over his house. How can we use a cable?

[topaz0]

Honestly might as well buy a new house at that point

[calamari4065]

If you use fast wired charging, which most phones do, you're causing significant wear to the battery. With daily fast charging, I've seen phones chew through their battery in under a year.

Conversely, the rather slow charge rate of wireless helps extend battery life quite a lot. This is why I never use fast charging, avoid wired charging in general, and limit my battery to 85% max charge. It's been three or four years and my battery is still at ~80% health.

Which is worse, wasting a small amount of power or trashing your phone's battery in a year or two? One has significantly higher monetary and environmental costs.

Besides all that, wired charging is not nearly as efficient as you think. The charge circuitry in your phone is optimistically 80-90%. The wall adapter can be anywhere from 50 to 90%, and scales pretty closely to how much you paid for it. Efficiency also goes down with faster charge rates.

I design switching converters and lithium charge circuits for my job. They're pretty great, but not nearly as good as you'd think.

[gruez]

>This is why I never use fast charging, avoid wired charging in general

Wireless charging isn't a silver bullet either. It generates tons of waste heat, which is also bad for batteries. I'm also not sure why you're so against wired charging, especially since you have to go out of your way and pay a premium for fast charge capable chargers. If you buy a bog standard 5W/10W charger, you're not fast charging. If you plug your phone into your computer, you're likely getting slow charging (0.5A to 1A).

[calamari4065]

I'm not against wired charging per se, I just think wireless is better.

I use an extremely old wireless charging stand that doesn't even hit 500mA. It gets warm, but not hot. It takes all damn night to charge which suits me just fine.

That said, I agree with you, which is why I've explicitly disabled fast wireless charging. The heat is almost as bad as excessive charge current. Though both heat and excessive current together is much worse than either individually. Which is exactly what you get with super fast charging modes, and why I disable those modes.

Generally, phones ship with at least a 20W charger these days. It's fine, probably.

Really my whole deal here is that my phone has a non-replacable battery. Paying someone to crack it open and replace the battery would cost a lot more than I'm willing to pay. My goal is to preserve the battery for as long as I can so I don't have to trash the whole phone.

Ultimately, this is a decision made for myself based on my own professional experience with lithium batteries and associated electronics. I definitely wouldn't recommend everyone do everything I'm doing; it is a bit excessive. But that's just how I like to do things.

[wkat4242]

Yeah I disable all the fast charging modes too. Except when I really need them for a quick top-up. I think it's great to have the capability when needed but not something to use every day.

[sbierwagen]

>go out of your way and pay a premium for fast charge capable chargers

If you're on the road and using your laptop's USB-C charger to charge your phone then it'll easily supply enough power for the fastest charge mode of any phone.

[imp0cat]

Yeah, it could supply 60W or even more. But it won't, because most people who care about this stuff set both the charging rate limit and max battery percentage limit in the phone's settings and don't worry about it anymore.

[Nullabillity]

> Besides all that, wired charging is not nearly as efficient as you think. The charge circuitry in your phone is optimistically 80-90%. The wall adapter can be anywhere from 50 to 90%, and scales pretty closely to how much you paid for it. Efficiency also goes down with faster charge rates.

The costs of wireless are on top of all of the costs of wired. You're not getting away from battery management just because you're using the air as a very inefficient cable.

[binkHN]

> If you use fast wired charging, which most phones do, you're causing significant wear to the battery.

I don't know about other Android phones, but Google's Pixel line of phones will do a slow charge overnight and time the top off to be in line with your morning alarm. So, my thought is that effort is being made here to extend battery life by specifically not fast charging overnight.

[calamari4065]

That's a pretty good feature and would significantly decrease battery wear. I'm actually surprised it's implemented in the Pixel, it should be a core feature of Android

[Symbiote]

Sony phones have done this for years. I have a 6 year old phone, still on its original battery. It reliably lasts all day and night.

[fomine3]

Slow wired charging is the best. Just buy a dirt cheap USB-A to C cable.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

In my experience, the best battery care measure is to get a phone with a good battery...

I bought a Huawei P30 Pro in early 2019, never took care of preserving the battery, always used fast charging (which is very fast in that phone, 40 W). 4 years later, the battery is still going strong (now the phone belongs to my wife).

On the other hand, I bought a Pixel 6 Pro in early 2021. From the beginning, I saw that the battery barely lasted a day of heavy usage, so I was more careful (trying to never get below 20%, deactivating 5G, etc.), plus the phone charges slower (around 20 W, I think) and has built-in charge planning to charge slower overnight. Even with all that, two years later, the battery is absolute crap. If I'm going to use the phone frequently (e.g. when travelling) I need an external battery to last though the day.

[binkHN]

> Always sad for me to know how much popular are wireless chargers, wasting 47% more energy aprox for charging the same as a wired charger.

The energy waste is a shame, but the convenience factor is mighty high, not to mention the wear and tear on your USB-C port is non-existent. Maybe one point for less USB cable waste and tossing perfectly good phones just because their USB ports are damaged?

[imp0cat]

You can get one of those magnetic adapters if you worry about your USB-C port that much.

[sowbug]

Your point on wireless-charging waste is valid, but I'm not sure a hypothetical initiative to reduce national electricity consumption should prioritize addressing it. The waste is similar to using a 7-watt LED bulb one hour extra per day (16Wh phone battery requires an extra 47% or 7.52 watts to charge wirelessly from 0% to 100% each night).

The concern about wireless inefficiency is very well-placed, however, in the case of electric cars. EVs will become an enormous consumer of electricity in the near future, so small changes now can have a big cumulative effect. "Charge your car as conveniently as your phone" would be an effective marketing tagline, so to that extent I agree that phones set a bad example for needless energy consumption in the name of convenience.

(edit: oops, bunch of other commenters made the same point while I was writing mine)

[Sebb767]

> The concern about wireless inefficiency is very well-placed, however, in the case of electric cars.

I don't think so. For one, with EVs you are paying pretty directly for the charge and nearly 50% extra for the hassle of not plugging in the cable seems excessive. For a charging station it would probably be more profitable to hire someone to plug your car in instead of going wireless, even disregarding the setup cost.

But, more importantly, fast wireless charging generates heat. This is fine for the miniscule amount of energy in phones, but would probably pose a serious problem with the wattage involved in changing EVs. We're currently at the point of having charging cables with integrated cooling, the inefficiency of wireless would likely either cook the car or limit the speed too much to be viable ("charge your car as conveniently as your phone, in a meager three days!").

[numpad0]

Qi receivers on phones don't wear out as fast as physical connectors do. There are no hard reasons why wireless is better in durability but practically they tend to be more reliable.

[technothrasher]

This is exactly when I've used wireless charging the most, after my physical connector has broken. It let's me extend the life of the phone.

[ppseafield]

I've had three phones' (two Nexus 5Xs, one Samsung S21) USB-C ports fail on me unexpectedly, and without wireless charging suddenly I can't charge the phone. I'm unlikely to buy a phone without wireless charging for that reason.

[ThatPlayer]

In a similar vein, my Nexus 7's microUSB port died and I continued using it for years with wireless charging. Not really a common feature on tablets anymore

[throwaway81523]

Yikes. I've had multiple laptop and phone power connectors flake out gradually but never so far suddenly. I just got my first USB-C phone because my old micro USB one was crapping out among other things. I'm gradually migrating from the old phone to the new. That would be much more hassle if the old phone was totally unable to charge. Now I'm worrying about USB-C, ugh.

[crashmat]

All connectors used that often break, but usbc is generally accepted as being more durable than microusb

[throwaway81523]

I've only experienced gradual failures so far, which give me time to fix or migrate. Sudden failure is harder to deal with. Wireless charging plus replaceable batteries would be a perfect combo.

[mtmail]

This 2016 article puts the cost of charging an ipad at $1.55 per year (iphone lower but I assume batteries got bigger or time). 47% wastage with wireless chrome is not much in terms of energy costs. https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-much-does-it-cost-to-charg...

[mcv]

> Always sad for me to know how much popular are wireless chargers, wasting 47% more energy aprox for charging the same as a wired charger.

That's also the main reason I'm not interested in wireless charging. A wire works fine, and it seems pretty obvious to me that wireless can never be as efficient. But I never had exact support for this belief, so thank you for that.

> Totally agree with that, if camera is fundamental for you maybe not the right choice.

With their modular approach, it would be nice if you could buy a better camera for it. I know that suggestion has been around since Fairphone 2, so I guess there must be a good reason why they're not doing that.

But if Fairphone was popular enough, I bet there would be a massive aftermarket for such upgrades.

[Moldoteck]

I like having wireless as a temporary alternative if the usb-c port breaks

[mcv]

That is an excellent point. Ports are always vulnerable.

On the other hand, it seems that wireless charging is also the reason why many modern phones have these stupidly fragile glass backs. So your whole phone gets more vulnerable.

[Moldoteck]

I don't buy it. Pixel 5 did have a kinda metallic-plastiky back (sort of plastic around wireless c, but it was impossible to spot the area with naked eye), it looked nice. You also can see the zenfone 10, it's some sort of plastic, but super nice to the touch. Having glass back is not mandatory for a wireless charging phone, I think companies do this to make more profit on repairs longterm

[mcv]

Maybe. I just miss the hard rubberized steel from my Motorola Milestone.

[bb88]

> Always sad for me to know how much popular are wireless chargers, wasting 47% more energy aprox for charging the same as a wired charger.

TBH some wired chargers are only 60 percent efficient in converting AC to DC. Then you'll also have energy losses inside the phone converting 5vdc to 3.7vdc for the lithium battery.

But, what? this is ~7 watts per charge completely full charge?

One could do the following and offset those 7 watts with a lot more to spare:

Add another layer of insulation.

Add a heat pump.

Add solar panels to your roof.

Stop mining Bitcoin.

[WheatMillington]

The amount of energy wasted through wireless charging is absolutely miniscule in the context of an ordinary day's energy usage for a normal person.