The Charging Conundrum — Ushering in a Wireless future
By: Ujwal Nambiar
Tags: Samsung, Technology, Wireless, Apple, Charger

With Samsung joining the list of OEMs who have stopped providing charging brick in the box, it is now clear that the future of charging is wireless or is it?

Apple.

The very name of the company divides people. For some, it is the tech version of second coming of Jesus — infallible and perfect in every regard and for others it is the unholy spawn of Satan itself and thus must be vanquished.

Now whether you like the company or hate it to the core, there is no denying that the company pushes typically niche tech into mainstream relevancy be it TWS with the AirPods series of products or USB (I am talking about the very first USB ports that replaced the “outdated ports” on the 1998 iMac) or even ARM with the recent M1 chips once again going toe to toe with the big boys over at the x86 club just like in the 80s.

Samsung’s jab at Apple for removing the charging brick from the iPhone 12 series which was promptly deleted right before the S21 launch

Apple: The Killer of I/O Standards

Apple is well known for killing legacy standards left and right.

They did it to ADB, SCSI and Floppy Disk in the 90s with the iMac and replaced it with the relatively unknown USB standard made by Intel. This “removal” allowed the USB peripheral market to bloom and as they say — the rest is history.

They also removed the CD-Drive and Ethernet port on the OG MacBook Air. They also removed Magsafe and well… every other standard port on the MacBook by the time the 2016 rolled around in favour of USB C / Thunderbolt 3 (which according to a certain analyst might make a comeback in 2021)

AirPods and the Rise of TWS

When Apple unveiled the iPhone 7 series back in 2016, it shocked the collective tech world by “courageously” removing the headphone jack from the phone which was eerily similar to what Nintendo did with the Gameboy Advance SP.

You could use the provided 3.5 mm to Lightning to use a wired earphones/headphone or use a new Apple product called AirPods, a $160 solution to the problem that didn’t exist before.

Phil Schiller, Ex-Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing giving a keynote on AirPods

What followed next is a slew of companies — tech, audio or otherwise all jumping on the bandwagon trying to ‘out-Apple’ Apple and getting a piece of the ever-growing TWS pie by providing better sound quality, longer battery life, utmost convenience, lower latency with the adoption of newer Bluetooth technologies, features like Active Noise Cancellation and Spatial Audio amongst others and that too at various price points.

This has massively improved the once inferior Bluetooth earphones/headphones which nowadays can be just as good as any wired earphones/headphones (looking at Sony XM3s and AirPods Max) and will eventually outperform them too benefiting consumers.

“The reason to move on: courage. The courage to move on and do something new that betters all of us — Phil Schiller”

Removing the Charging Brick

It is no secret that Apple wants to go all in into complete wireless. After all, it is all for the “environment” and “e-waste reduction” and doing our part in saving our “beloved” Mother Earth from destruction.

Even OEMs like Xiaomi and Samsung have now taken steps for the same by removing charging bricks from the boxes of their flagship phones and selling it separately for a small fee of course (except Xiaomi who will provide one at no additional cost)

While yes, there is some benefits to removing the charging brick that leads to lesser e-waste and how more phones can be shipped in a single trip due to smaller phone boxes reducing fuel consumption but ultimately the real benefit that consumers will get from such a move is the advancement of wireless charging technology just like Bluetooth technology before it.

The Wireless Future of Charging

Wireless Charging is nothing new. It uses what’s called a resonant inductive coupling.

The charger sends a test signal to the device for calculating the energy required to charge it. The device then charges it via electromagnetic induction and it stops once the device is fully charged.

Now that charging bricks are being removed, we are seeing companies like Xiaomi, Oppo and Huawei putting out chargers that provide higher watt, faster charging with up to 120w Wired and 80w Wireless allowing consumers to stick to a single brick while reusing the newer cables that they receive in the box or… even go wireless.

As more phones come with no charging bricks, we could see a massive adoption of wireless chargers by consumers which could kick off a TWS styled battle between companies trying to provide more and more innovative, faster and safer wireless chargers at different price points and more OEMs will start incorporating charging coils into their phones and also sell their own chargers separately in order to make a buck of course which would enable the future of the port less phones.

Also combined with improved battery technology like Solid State, the future of topping your phone in a matter of seconds by placing it on the table and then the phone lasting for days on end will no longer be a work of science fiction but by the time we get there AR Glasses will be all the rage.

And yes, one can look at the damage wireless charging causes to Lithium-ion batteries due to battery degradation and the potential end of offline wire-based data transfer, software upgrades/downgrades using PCs and even putting Custom ROMs onto the phone and write off the whole charging brick removal/wireless charger trend as an anti-consumer cash grab which kills important things like Right to Repair designed to look environmentally positive but in the long run it will revolutionise the way we charge not just phones but other things too.

The future of charging is undoubtedly wireless and the only way to reach there is by…. Removing the charger out of the box.