Today we will discuss whether wireless chargers degrade the battery life of your iPhone. The answer to this is not straightforward, I will explain it to you in details. If you have come here for a yes or no answer, you will be disappointed. Because the answer is both yes and no, and I will explain to you how does wireless chargers degrade iPhone battery health, and what long-term impact does this have?
The first point I want to tell you is that wireless chargers can actually prolong your battery health, and this happens indirectly, but is a result of wireless charging. This is also a part of human nature because we humans are inherently lazy, we always check how long our iPhone’s battery will last without putting it on the charger. And trust me, keeping phone on a wireless charger is a lot easier than plugging it in to a standard port charger. The difference may not seem like much but when you are very lazy then putting the iPhone on a wireless charger seems much simpler than holding iPhone in one hand and plugging the cable in other hand.
So when it comes to lithium polymer and lithium-ion batteries, it is always recommended that you do not let the battery percentage go below 20 percent as this degrades battery. You don’t want your cycles to end too quickly. You want the battery to last longer and use fewer cycles. And wireless chargers help with that because it’s easier to keep your iPhone on a wireless charger. You can put your iPhone on the wireless charger before it reaches 20 percent. That way the iPhone will use fewer charge cycles of its battery. Because using a wireless charger is more convenient than a standard charger. You are prolonging the battery cycles of your iPhone, means you are directly helping your battery to last longer and preventing the percentage from degrading when you check the battery health.
Wireless chargers can actually be beneficial for your iPhone’s battery. But now let’s talk about how it can degrade your iPhone’s battery. This is also an indirect consequence of wireless charging. Wireless charging does not degrade your iPhone’s battery. But there is a side effect of wireless charging that degrades your iPhone’s battery. And now let me explain to you.
So first we have to understand what is wireless charging. Wireless charging is induction charging. It basically has two coils. Transmitter coil and receiver coil. Which transfer charge from one to the other. Some phones have both coils where you can charge your another phone or air buds using phone’s wireless charger. So iPhone can charge your another phone or air buds using its own charger.
But in most cases there is a transmitting coil and a receiving coil. So when the energy is transmitted wirelessly, charge basically has to go through air, usually when it is on a wireless charging pad. So there is a plastic cover on top which hides the coil. Then air, then glass or plastic back of iPhone and then there is the coil inside iPhone, sometimes the case of iPhone is also in the middle. So there are at least 4 mediums through which the charge has to go to the receiving coil of iPhone. There is a lot of loss in transferring energy this way and this energy gets converted into heat, this heat first goes to your iPhone. Obviously some heat will go into the frame of the wireless charger but most of the heat will go into your iPhone.
Now the reason behind this is that wireless chargers are quite inefficient than plugged-in chargers. A recent study showed that wireless chargers use 47 percent more charge than a standard plugged-in charger. So these things are quite inefficient, 60-70 percent efficient, whereas a standard plugged-in charger is 95 percent efficient. This can be a little less in case of fast charging because fast charging also reduces efficiency. So this applies to wireless chargers as well as fast charge wireless chargers are much less efficient than standard slow charge wireless chargers.
So this is where the law of conservation of energy applies. If there is a lot of energy in, then the energy out should also be the same. If no energy is created, no energy is destroyed, just the form of energy is converted or transferred. Because these wireless chargers are inefficient and the charge has to travel through some medium to reach iPhone. So energy is always lost and converted into heat which gets transferred to your iPhone and your iPhone overheats.
Then guess what is the biggest enemy of your iPhone’s battery? Excessive temperature is the biggest enemy for lithium polymer and lithium-ion batteries. And this is the same thing which degrades the battery. So wireless chargers can damage your iPhone’s battery if it gets too hot. A little heat is okay on a wireless charger, It will not do anything to your battery. A slow wireless charger like 10 watt to 15 watt wireless charger will charge your iPhone slowly and will not generate much heat, so you are safe there.
But if you are using a fast charge wireless charger like Apple’s 20-watt and MagSafe combo. Then it will generate a lot of heat and iPhone will get quite warm. And if there are too fast wireless chargers that go beyond 30 watts, all of these will generate heat. This heat will not go anywhere else, it will run in your phone and will degrade your battery health due to the heat. So if you must use a wireless charger then buy one that charges slowly. And if you want to charge your iPhone too fast, then just charge it with lightning cable and use your standard charger. And when you are not too busy, you can use a wireless charger. But be careful, not use it at fast charging rate if you are concerned about your battery health.
But if you are not much concerned about your iPhone’s battery health and you replace your phone frequently, then it’s not a big problem for you. But this is exactly how wireless chargers can prolong the battery life of your iPhone as well as degrade it. Both these are side effects of wireless charging though wireless charging does not do this on its own. These are just side effects of human factor and thermal factor along with the laws of Energy.
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