GoKawiilDoes wireless charging deplete battery health? Does it matter that your smartphone feels warm while charging? The short answer to both is yes, but for most people, the optimal balance between convenience and better battery life is to use wireless charging for battery top-ups during the day and leave wired charging for overnight power-ups.
What happens when you use wireless charging?
When you charge up your smartphone using a cable and power adapter, energy flows from the source through the adapter straight to your phone.
Wireless charging takes more steps to do the same thing. It uses an electromagnetic induction field to send power into the phone. The charging pad pushes electricity around an internal wire coil that magnetically passes energy across to a similar coil inside your phone. So, when you use a wireless charger, the energy flows from the source into an adapter and into the charging device, hops across to your phone to be converted into energy, and recharges the lithium battery in your device.
That means charging systems approved by the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) Qi2 standard are up to 30 percent less efficient at getting power into your device than using a cable. The energy that doesn't make it has to go somewhere, which is why it converts into heat, warming your charger and your phone. That heat can deplete battery life over time, reducing capacity by up to 12 percent over two years, or up to 25 percent in hot environments.