All of which is covered by having a dock as the act of picking it up breaks connection.

With the added advantage they were cheaper than wireless, and unlike AirPower actually available.

Yep, and curiously enough it is exactly the way cordless phones have been designed for years.

For someone "on the move" the dock or the wireless chargers are equally unsuitable, for those (most of users I believe) that simply plugin their (smart)phone placing it on their night table when they go to sleep they are pretty much the same, the "you can lay it down in every orientation" doesn't seem to me such a needed feature.

You can’t use the phone while it’s in the dock, and putting it in and taking it out is actually quite annoying. I’ve had several docks in the past, I wouldn’t go back.

I had a dock and replaced it with wireless charger as soon as they were available. The ease of just placing your phone on a surface vs. lining up your phone with the dock is well worth it.

You mean lining it up precisely on the surface?

That's why I stopped using a wireless charger.

The two Qi chargers I've used don't really require much lining up. With the Pixel Stand the alignment is obvious, I've never missed the alignment on that. I also have used Samsung's round, flat charger. Its a circle. Its hard to miss the center of the circle.

The Qi wireless charger for my Galaxy S5 has a noticeable precision requirement for placing the phone - it doesn't charge at full speed unless the phone is accurately placed, which is infuriating and makes me cut back my use of wireless charging; I've confirmed this by having a USB power meter attached and watching the current draw change as I move the phone around the pad.

Might be using the wrong wireless charger, I've heard this complaint and its all it could be.

If it isn't what your really telling us is you couldn't learn how to place a phone on a small surface.

Your buying Apple. Price as an argument is long gone.

This whole thread is really asinine.

Wireless charging is a seamless, elegant solution to a problem.

It is not the only solution.

It is not a perfect solution.

It is not the cheapest solution.

It is not the most cost effective solution.

It is likely not the best solution for your battery life.

Docks and wires are not an elegant solution.

That's all the argument is.

One is old, painful and requires though, the other, does not.

It doesn't need to be a perfect argument, you don't have to buy into it. But unless you've tried it, please keep your opinions to yourself, because there is unlikely a chance you'll really "get it" and your single sided perspective is really not that useful.

You need to take your own advice.

Cables were never old, painful nor requires thought. I see the cable, I plug.

Your side is just that, an opinion.

MagSafe was in the sweet spot IMO. Doesn't require too much alignment, symmetrical pinout, disconnects quickly and safely, low mechanical wear from use.

I've taken to buying magnetic USB cables for this reason. Plug a connector into the bottom of phone/tablet, put a cable at work, in car, and next to the bed, and it's super easy to connect and disconnect, with no worry that the Micro-B connection is getting bent (with cats and a child we've gone through way more USB Micro-B cables than I would have expected).

There are also magnetic USB-C adapters that do USB, power, and HDMI. I use one to dock my laptop.

I can see one significant improvement for the wireless mats. The number one part of my phone to fail first has always been the charging port. The mat reduced the wear and tear on that port which could extend the life of my phone.

Nope, his side is pretty solid.

Just place on a mat is much less effort compared to plug cable.

> I know many who almost never charge their phones, essentially always living at 5%.

That's amazing since I'm the opposite. I always try to be near or at 100% (both phone & laptop) while I'm at my desk.

I do this too, so don’t take this as criticism.

Isn’t this bad for the battery? ISTR you want to keep the battery between 20 and 80 percent. More than that and it winds up heating up the battery during charge. Or is that just for electric cars?

That was the case, I think, with old NiCd batteries, but with lithium ion batteries, you maximize battery longevity by keeping it mostly charged, I read recently.

Not really, that’s still the sweetspot for most lithium batteries as well (being under 20% is much more critical than being over 80% though).

What’s different between them is battery memory effect. With NiCd & NiMH you are supposed to let it discharge until 20%, then continuously charge up, and then repeat.

With Lithium based batteries it’s a recommended practice to charge in short bursts and keep the battery at a medium level.

In any case, most devices now a days will manage the battery in ways that you should not really bother. It’s amazing the conplexity that battery systems have nowadays.

That's called (mild) OCD and ordinary people don't suffer from it. Don't feel bad, I do the same, it seems to be a common trait in IT (anyone writing code kind of has to have it...).

If I don't keep my phone at 100% while at my desk, and then I go out somewhere after work, there's a chance my phone will run down to 0% while I'm out, potentially stranding me somewhere.

I don't think that's OCD. It's just planning ahead.

What kind of phone do you have? I get 2 full days use on a charge. Surely you need a new battery instead?

If I'm in an area with good connectivity I can easily last two days with my OnePlus. On the move, though, or in bad signal areas, and 20 hours might be the limit.

People who always plan ahead to a T (to keep their phone 100%), have some OCD. I should know.

I used to live life at the edge and only charge my phone at 1%. Then a relative had a medical emergency and I had to stay at the hospital for hours, and my phone lost power so i couldnt call anyone. Now I always try to keep it fully charged. So no this is definitely not OCD.

You only did it after a medical emergency. If the drive to do it was innate without any "hard lesson" required, it would be OCD.

Compared to tons of people who couldn't care less on living on 70% or 50% or 20%.

Learning from other people's mistakes is OCD?

People with OCD still learn from their own and other people's mistakes and adapt their own behavior.

It's not the learning part that's important, it's how one applies what they learned, and the way they act on what they fear might happen that can fall into OCD.

An obsession with being always 100% charged when you leave the house, immediately plugging to charge etc, always checking to make sure, etc, can point to OCD, even if it "makes sense" (e.g. to avoid being ever stuck without charge in an emergency).

OCD is obsessive compulsive disorder. Learning from people's mistakes is unrelated.

My solution is to get a phone that hold a charge for the day, Motorola makes some.