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.

It's not about the feature, it's about the implementation...

Source: http://www.technobuffalo.com/wp-content/uploads/2013
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I was just talking the other day about how the only time I ever found AirDrop to be useful was when I was sending files or locations on maps to myself. I made some comment about how it was a pretty decent system, it just happens to be that nobody else uses it.

My father, someone who has hated Apple since the early ‘90’s when her got into IT, chimed in with “Well, that’s what happens when you create a closed system.”

I then reminded him of “S bump,” Samsung’s NFC sharing system debuted in the Galaxy S3. He admitted he had never used it, but maintained that NFC is still the future, because it is an open system. He doesn’t however, believe that it will take off as a payment system, because there are more secure options that are cheaper (cards with ID tags).

But this brings me back to one of my big thoughts about the consumer tech world, and one that Chris Pirillo actually shares: it’s not the feature, it’s the implementation.

AirDrop is a great feature, but not many people use it, so the implementation is subpar. It isn’t a one person kind of feature, it necessitates two users in order for it to work. In that regards, the implementation is poor, because I rarely have the opportunity to use it. Even when I do, most people have other ways of sharing whatever they could be AirDropping.

The exact same thing happened to S bump (or for that matter, most of Samsung’s S features debuted in their Galaxy S3 and S4 phones). I've also heard that the stylus in the Galaxy Note series falls prey to this issue of being unused. S bump was a cool idea, I’m not going to knock that (hah, pun, get it?). The problem was that the feature was not well implemented (required specific hardware, software, and was a little awkward in real life).

Another big place that this has taken place is with Google Hangouts as a mobile messaging platform. Apple’s iMessage became a huge hit, because it had enough good features, yes, but the implementation was also wonderful; all you need to send an iMessage is an Apple device, and especially in the US, a lot of people have at least one Apple device. Google thought they could beat that with Hangouts, which feature-wise is better than iMessage for one reason: as long as you have internet, it’s device agnostic. I love Hangouts; it has a really nice UI, especially on iOS. However, the implementation isn't there yet. I can currently iMessage all but a few Android hold outs in my friend group. I currently have two contacts that use Hangouts. The implementation simply isn't there.

The same could be said for Google Wallet and NFC payments. I’m a fan of Wallet. I have it, I use it, and I like it. I became a user once the Wallet Card was released, though because NFC “tap to pay” is really not standard yet, especially not here in the Midwest. I've seen one NFC terminal in my life. So, while the feature of paying with a tap of my phone is really awesome, the implementation is terrible, because I can only use it so many places.

On a related note, Wallet’s “send money” feature is really cool, and it wish I could use it for giving my friends gas money for rides home from college, but they don’t use wallet, so the feature is not as useful (I think they can still redeem it [?], but they don’t want to deal with it). The implementation just isn't there.

I think you get the point. Or at least I hope by now you see what I’m trying to say. I’m sure we've all run into a similar situation (perhaps with a social media site that you find really cool, but none of your friends use, defeating the purpose of -social- media *cough* Google+ *cough*). Imagine if you were the only person on tumblr. Yeah, it’s cool, and it has great features, but without people using it, there’s no reason for you to use it either.

We see this especially true today with the announcement of the removal of Twitter’s

Source: https://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/
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#music app from the App Store and Google Play. The app had an interesting feature: music discovery based on what others were talking about on Twitter. The problem was that the implementation was awful. There was no separate music service, but you were just forwarded to other places where you could listen to the song, if you paid for their streaming service. The UI and UX were pretty unattractive too. On top of that, not that many people were even using the app. My personal opinion is that that is the reason it never caught on, and why Twitter is pulling the app; the features were decent, but the implementation was awful.

I suppose that’s my warning to consumers. Just because a feature is cool, doesn't mean it’s going to be used, which means that it won’t necessarily offer a good experience. Don’t buy something for a feature, unless you know that it has a good implementation. If the feature requires other people using it, make sure that you know other people that are using said feature, and that you've had cases where you missed out on something because you lacked the feature.

I don’t know how to wrap this up. So this is my conclusion. Sue me.