Quick charge vs wireless charging

There seems to be this move towards quick charging in the Android OEM world, and almost to the complete sacrifice of wireless charging. This misses the point of why wireless charging is great, though.

I will refer to quick charging as such, but also fast charging, and it goes by turbo charging as well. It's a Qualcomm technology, but every Android OEM that implements it has their own name for the tech. Know it's the same thing.

Don't get me wrong, quick charge is actually really cool. It's also not any worse for the battery than wireless charging, or so says Qualcomm, maker of the technology.

The real advantage of quick charge surfaces for the people that don't charge their phone every night. In my experience, there's a siginificant group of people who drain a battery near dead, and then charge it whenever that ~10% or lower battery occurs, and stop charging when they have to move from the power source. Alternatively, there are the super power users that simply have to charge their phone whenever possible, because they burn 30% battery an hour. In either case, though, they want to spend as little time tethered to the wall as possible, but they still want/need to get as much battery as they can. Especially with today's ~2900 mAh average flagship battery capacity, we need fast charging. Even Apple supports fast charging on their new iPhones by using an iPad charging brick.

So quick charging is great, and definitely has its purpose. But so does wireless charging.

Yes, wireless charging is a little bit slower than charging with a 1A charger. But it's a brilliant technology for the people that do charge their phones overnight. For example, the Nexus 6, with its 3200 mAh battery, takes around 4-5 hours to fully wireless charge from 0-100%. But that's not a problem for overnight. The advantage of wireless charging, then, is that it doesn't require plugging anything in. Especially with non-reversible USB connections in Android phones, this can be a challenge in the dark at night at the bedside. Wireless charging just requires the placing of the device on a pad. Done.

So, why aren't more OEM's supporting it? Well, there are still two major competing methods, those being qi and powermat. Qi is by far the most popular, but it isn't the industry standard, by any means. Also, carriers generally force manufacturers to not include wireless charging out of the box on US models, so that consumers have to buy accessories to support the feature. And consumers don't really know it exists, let alone that they should buy certain cases for it. Also, Apple hasn't chosen to support it on iPhone, yet, which is how most technology goes mainstream now-a-days.

And the biggest problem facing wireless charging right now is that it's still finicky if done poorly (which is likely why Apple hasn't decided to mess with it yet). It is incredibly convenient when done well, and I love it. But it's incredibly frustrating when it doens't work. The Nexus 6 is a perfect example of wireless charging done poorly. It starts with poor advertising of the feature, certainly. But it extends beyond that; the curve of the phone causes it to not sit well on many flat qi chargers, which happens to be the most common form that they take. This leads to it being hard for the coils to line up for the charging to occur, It's far too finnicky. It's especially surprising being that the Nexus 6 is the successor to the Nexus 5, which had a brilliant magnetic system with its OEM made charging pad that made lining up the charging coils fool proof. To be fair, the Nexus 6 charges great with the Tylt Vu wireless charging stand, but that's an expensive charger that not everyone will want.

Consumers just don't care about wireless charging enough for manufacturers to bother trying to include it. They'd rather focus on charging features that every consumer can understand and use as they always have. That's why we're seeing the quick charge push.