[One (M7) Accessories] MP1_:
My Qi setup for the M7

Hey guys,

I just noticed this thread and thought I'd share my experience with qi charging the M7. I did a fair amount of searching about a half a year ago and tried out various different qi receivers, chargers and so forth. Today I'm using qi charging for my M7 exclusively (i.e. no other method of charging) - at home as well as in my car.

My current setup:

qi receivers differ quite a lot. The best one I found was the Blueboon one (as mentioned earlier). I got mine from Amazon.de, but only after asking the chinese seller on amazon us to make it availible for the german market. Looks like this (variant B or 'narrow interface down'):

[IMG="qi receiver mounted on the backside of the m7"]http://pragers.de/mp1/pics/xda/DSCF8495-small.jpg[/IMG][IMG="qi receiver package front side"]http://pragers.de/mp1/pics/xda/DSCF8496-small.jpg[/IMG][IMG="qi receiver package back side"]http://pragers.de/mp1/pics/xda/DSCF8497-small.jpg[/IMG]

It works quite well, delivering a 750mA charging current under ideal conditions (varies from 690 to 750). Also there is no slow charge warning appearing on the M7. As you can see the receiver cable is folded twice in order to place the receiving coil in the middle of the device (which matters to some of the chargers).

This construction would not last long very long on it's own. Thus I put a cover around my M7:

[IMG="M7 with cover - front side"]http://pragers.de/mp1/pics/xda/DSCF8492-small.jpg[/IMG][IMG="M7 with cover - back side"]http://pragers.de/mp1/pics/xda/DSCF8491-small.jpg[/IMG]

I use the 'Incipio HT-342 Frequency' because it is not too bulky, it is flexible enough to still fit with the receiver strapped to the back of the M7 and it has a slick (i.e. not sticky) surface which enables me to slide it into my pockets easily.

For charging at home I use a cheap qi charger from ebay. There are a few things to look out for when choosing a charger:

some make annoying sounds when starting or stopping to charge

some have leds - which really help with placinging the device

most chargers with more than one coil tend to not work well with the M7 (I guess due to the aluminum case)

not every chargers delivers the full 750mA OTA

one of the cheap ones I got stopped working really soon

use a power adapter which is able to deliver enough current (due to losses 2A is recommended)

not all keep charging when the device is full, some do and the best ones adapt their current and go in some kind of charge keeping mode

For charging in my car I found a Samsung universal qi charger to deliver the best results by far. The 'Samsung EP-HN910IBEGWW'. Unfortunatly it's a bit on the expensive side, but it's working better than any other car charger I've tried (including the air-dock ones) and it is universal (my brother can charge his Nexus 5 with it also). It's also easy to adapt to a costom mounting constuct, as it uses a standard garmin ball mount on the back. Final warning: try to use the 12V power adapter supplied by samsung, it is one of the few that delivers stable and high voltage and current without overheating. There are two alternatives on the market which also work, but they deliver a little bit less power (one from Aukey [4.8A] and one from Scosche which has an annoying blue led).

There are of cause limitations one should be aware of:

qi charging is not the fastest method around the block. It does about 3/4 of the original 1A charging speed of the M7 - so not too bad all things considered.

charging does heat up the phone. Which isn't a problem at home but can be a limiting factor if you're on the road and the sun is heating up your car in the summer (using energy saving mode - 2 out of 4 cpu cores only - helps in these situations).

initiating charging always turns on the display, which can be quite annoying when charging in heated conditions in the car and the charging switches on and off from time to time. That way the display stays on far to often and produces additional (unnessasary) heat. I found no hack, kernel or other way around this behavior so far.

Kind regards

MP1

---------- Post added at 05:02 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:00 PM ----------

btw is there a way to specify how large the images are displayed in the thread? (other than lowering their resolution, which I would not want to for lack of details)