Pixel 4 — State of wireless charging
My excitement was through the roof while buying/owning a pixel 4. Irrespective of what people have to say, I love this phone.
The world of charging phones Wirelessly
My next bundle of excitement was being new to the wireless charging world. Although it's not something new but for me it was.
Without wasting much time, I started looking out for some good wireless chargers, going through reviews, watching youtube videos about them. My research involved brands such as Anker, RavPower, Belkin including Google’s Pixel Stand and other random wireless chargers on Amazon.
Concerns
After doing a bit hassle here and there, I came across various issues people were facing with wireless charging w.r.t Pixel devices. Keeping all the good parts on a side note, I went in further deep into those issues. Listing down some of the common things I found
- Does not charge fast enough
- Says “Charging rapidly” but not so rapid
- measuring performance in terms of time taken to full charge
- jumps between “Charging rapidly” to “Charging slowly”
- Previously it used to say “Charging rapidly” but now it just says “wirelessly charging”
- Was charging but suddenly stopped
- Only works with Pixel Stand and not others
Then I stumbled upon some comments form fellow geek members posting some numbers using apps like Ampere and Inware which can apparently tell you the amount of current phone is sucking from the source.
Throwing the numbers
Pixel 3 introduced wireless charging but with a catch which states — it will support fast charging only through Pixel stand and some other google approved models and will fallback to slow charging on others.
I will not go in detail about that since all of that is true. Keeping the past in the past, Google has finally done things right with Pixel 4. For the 6 of you interested, here are some articles.
Back to numbers, the main highlight — Pixel 4 now supports fast wireless charging up to 11W on Qi chargers.
My Understanding
Of what I could understand after reading across articles and subreddits, There are a lot of factors in play when it comes to wireless charging.
- Battery health
- Battery Temperature
- How much charge it is holding currently
- Quality of connection between devices(alignment, position)
- Distance between devices (Applies to phones with cases)
- Charger required power source type — USB PD, Qualcomm Quick Charge and others…
- Type of cable being used
Getting into details
To test out my theory that a normal wireless charger should work, I bought a fairly cheap charger off Amazon which supports up to 15W output.
The first time, I got disappointed as the speeds were slow. To quantify my assumptions I did the same, used Ampere and Inware apps. Adding some screenshots
- Using Pixel standard 18W wired connection
- Wireless with standard Pixel adapter and generic wall adapters and USB ports
Since the wireless charger, I bought stated the requirement of a Qualcomm QC2.0 or 3.0 adapter. So I did that and bought an QC3.0 power adapter and results were surprising
- Wireless with QC3.0 power adapter
What was most surprising that Inware app showed 13.2W fast but pixel could only support up to 11W. I had to doubt my understanding of this since according to the following article Inware app shows the current Output.
Either App is showing wrong/unreliable data or its not what we thought it is. There is subreddit about this issue and how people are mad about Inware showing wrong information which I don’t believe is true. I think its the actual output the device is capable of but can't be sure about it either.
Irrespective of the results, I have a piece of good news that even my cheap wireless charger can charge the phone fast enough which is exactly what I was looking for and so do others on Reddit.
Blindsides
I am aware that fast wireless charging can cause some issue which may end up damaging phone battery. Issues like overheating are common. It is recommended for overnight charging to not use fast mode.
It also depends on the quality of charger and if it has some heat management solution built-in or not. Overall things should be fine and phones also have these safety mechanisms and will prevent any damage if it comes to that.
My piece of advice and conclusion
Before buying Check what sort of power standard is required by the charger. Most of them support QC3.0 but then you’ll need a separate adapter, your regular ones won't cut it. Even the pixel adapter which is fast will slow charge wirelessly.
There are some with USB PD for which standard 18W pixel adapter should work but I havent tested those.
USB PD, Quick Charge, Dash Charge, Warp Charge are of different implementations. First one is the standard Google is using across.
Well, that’s all for now. I’ll update if there are any new findings.
Please don’t hate me for being a Google fanboy. I am fully aware that other companies have faster methods and better features and so on.
Cheers :)
