Gadgetory

hello my name is Gary Sims from Andrew authority now personally I think wireless charging technology should be built into every mid-range and high-end phone unfortunately it isn't but I think it should be built in because it frees us at least in part from all those cable nests that we have here I get some help here if you do own a phone that has wireless charging you probably didn't get a wireless charging pad when you bought your phone today I'm going to look at three of the top-selling pads and see how they work and how they perform so before we go on to look at the individual wireless charging pads and test their performance I wanted to look quickly at how wireless charging works back in 1831 Michael Faraday discovered electromagnetic induction where electricity is made by passing a magnet through a coil of wire today we use this phenomenon for a wide range of applications including transformers electric motors generators solenoids and wireless charging ok to show how wireless charging works I want us just to do two very quick experiments I went down to my local hardware store what I have here is a nail I wrapped it round with some thin copper wire I've got one end here already attached to a 9-volt battery I'm now going to attach the other end to the 9-volt battery and I want to show you that what we get is an electromagnet okay so that's basically current running through a coil will produce a magnetic field now that's an important principle so what Faraday discovered was the fact that this principle works in Reverse now I have here a coil of copper wire wrapped around a nail I have to project to my multimeter normally we would use a galvanometer but I don't have one so I'm just going to use a multimeter and I have here a magnet now what happens is when you bring the magnet close to the coil in fact normally through the coil you get a tiny bit of electricity created I'm going to zoom in now to the multimeter so you can see this tiny bit of current that's being generated now for Chi charging it always a lot more complicated a lot more sophisticated but it's the basic principle magnetic fields and coils can generate current which charges the phone for my testing I chose three popular Wireless charges Samsung's official Wireless Qi charging station the anchor ultra slim wireless charging pad and the ravpower Wireless Qi charging pad to test the wireless charging pad I've come up with three criteria first of all how easy is it to align the phone onto the wireless charging pad secondly what feedback do I get from the pad that the phone is properly aligned and then it is now charging and thirdly how long does it take to charge now for all three pads I'm using the same phone the galaxy s6 edge now for some context the s6 Edge has a 2600 milliamp hour battery and using Samsung's wired quick charger that comes with the phone it will charge in about 1 hour and 20 minutes from 0 to 100% there are two more things I want to mention first the charging cycle of a lithium-ion battery is performed in two stages this is true of standard wired charging for quick charging and for wireless charging during the first stage a constant current is applied to the battery they when the batteries around 80 to 90 percent fall depending on the exact design the current will be lowered but the voltage will remain the same the second thing is that to measure the voltage the current being used by the charger I use an inline USB volt and amp meter however this will only tell me the current and voltage being used by the charger itself it can't reveal what is happening at the coils the Samsung is the first of our circular pads which we are testing whereas the anchor wants to be ultra slim the Samsung pad brings some shape and design the lower half of the charger is smaller and it curves up to a full pad the top of the pad is ringed by an LED strip which allows a notification like to be easily seen and on top of the pad is a silicon circle which holds your phone in place aligning the phone the pad is easy enough you just need to put the center of the phone in the center of the pad and you can place in any orientation that you like when you place a phone on the pad you get a nice reassuring blue glow from the ring around the top of the charger if you're using a galaxy s6 or s6 edge and I guess a note 5 or an S 6 + edge then the LED goes green when the phone is charged charging time was just over 2 hours and 40 minutes from 0 to 100% the Charter draws 6 watts of power fairly consistently until the battery reaches around 90% of the charge then it starts a tail off at the end of the charge cycle it was drawing around 2.5 watts allowing the phone on the anchor is simple enough you basically just need to put the center of the phone into the center of the pad since the pad is circular you can place the phone any orientation you like it doesn't need to be straight up down or horizontal there is however no rubber or silicone on the pad so it's the most slippery of the three having said that I didn't have any trouble getting the phone to stay on the pad however the phone might be prone to being moved off-center if you bump into your desk accidentally the pad doesn't come with any kind of beeper or buzzer and the only indication from the pad that you are charging the phone comes from a small LED unfortunately LED can be easily obscured by your phone if you place it with the end overhanging the LEDs position however your phone should also give an indication that it is charging correctly or alternatively it isn't hard to form the habit of avoiding certain orientations so the LED is always visible in terms of charging performance the anchor performed just as well as the Samsung and the ravpower it charged from zero to 100% in around two hours and 40 minutes the pad was using around 6 watts of power for the first couple of hours until the battery reached around 80% and then it started to decrease slowly at first until about 90% and then more sharply as the battery reached its full charge unlike the other two charging as the ravpower is rectangular rather than circular personally I prefer this design as it defines very clearly where the phone should be placed however like the other pad you don't actually need to place the phone long ways to match the pads design you can actually place it at any angle as long as the center of the phone is in the center of the pad it's also worth mentoring that the white circle around the power symbol in the middle of the pad is an anti-slip silicon which helps minimize slipping or movement due to NOx as well as an LED that shows the phone has been placed correctly on the pad the ravpower also has a built-in beeper with sound when a good connection has been made this gives you a reassurance that everything is working as expected the performance of the pad is very similar to that of the other two it takes around 2 hours and 40 minutes to charge the Samsung Galaxy s6 from 0 to 100% the charger draws over 6 watts of power for just the first 2 hours until the battery gets close to 90% full then it starts to decline eventually dipping to under 3 watts as the battery reaches its full charge so what does all this mean well the first thing we learn and it may be a bit obvious but it's worth pointing out is that wireless charging is slower than why it's charging especially if your phone has a quick charge technology built into it the second thing we see is that all the pads charge the phone in exactly the same amount of time 2 hours and 40 minutes now this is because the chesse standard specifies how much power can be transferred from the pad to the phone and all the pads have imprinted that standard very well in fact they could all be using the same components I have no idea so the third thing we really understand is that you're buying decision will be based on price on design and on functionality and not necessarily on how quickly the pad charges the phone and so there we have it I personally was expecting there to be a difference in the performance of the different wireless charging pads but what we found out is that they're all the same within maybe one minute of each other personally I was quite surprised about that my name is Gary Sims mandrill authority I hope you enjoyed this video if you did please do give it a thumbs up also don't forget to subscribe to and royal authority YouTube channel and also please leave some comments below to tell me what you think about wireless charging do you have a wireless charging pad do you use it do you have any good experiences any bad experiences and as for me I'll see you in my next video you