When was the last time you charged your phone via wire?
Wireless charging is slowly taking over the smartphone world. Almost every flagship-grade phone supports it nowadays, and it only makes sense to have a Qi pad here and there around your home or workplace. Sure, it's not incredibly fast, but that point is kind of moot, considering you can just rest your phone on a charging pad for the whole time you are not using it.
Why are we talking about wireless charging? Well, recent rumors have been saying that Apple intends to ship the iPhone 12 phones with no wallcharger in the box. Feint whispers suggest that Samsung is considering doing the same with its phones in the near future.
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Is this corporate greed? Not necessarily. Companies are definitely under pressure by authorities in different parts of the world to try and reduce their e-waste. The EU famously asked Apple to ditch the Lightning connector and switch to a "common" standard so consumers would need to buy (and subsequently — throw away) less cables.
Two PhoneArena authors discussed the different aspects of removing the wall charger in a debate here.
But this whole carfuffle made me ask myself another question. "When is the last time I plugged the iPhone in a cable?". I have a wireless charger in my living room and one next to my gaming computer — the phone is always getting a bit of juice sporadically throughout the day. In fact, when I go to sleep, my phone usually has an 80-90% charge. When I want to transfer files, I usually do it wirelessly — I just can't be bothered with digging for wires when I can just AirDrop or Google Drive my stuff.
I am pretty sure a ton of gear heads out there have more accessories than me. But before I dare argue "the wall charger removal is not a big deal", why not ask the public? When was the last time you actually hooked your smartphone to a wired wallplug to charge?
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Things that are NOT allowed: