Why is wireless charging not included in FP4

We could stretch this discussion until we come to the conclusion that the best way to save energy is to not use any electronic device at all…

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This gets near issue or solar input.

Once we’ve burnt all the trees and fossil fuels, to produce atomic energy we resort to quantum particles of light machines.

The efficiency of wireless charging is hardly an issue for those of us with independent solar arrays, though more use may mean more degradation, so why spend the resource producing heat if it’s not wanted.

For those masses of people plugged into the nuclear and fossil grid it may cost a few extra pennies. Charging contributes to global warming but being active on this forum is probably 100 times more of a consumer issue than wireless charging a phone.

Exclusive: Buy a solar energy power generator now and qualify for the new Fairphone 4 SE (Solar Edition) with wireless charging!

Just kidding…

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One of the options for the September surprise, I touted may be an FP4 with wireless charging and a solar panel.

Alas, a loss, a lack of Jack is what I got.

All for the sake of the King and Country

More, batteries, less efficient, more radiation hazard, more electrical use and more complicated that a couple of coils etc. etc.

That’s quite an issue. I wonder about the cost and the extra space required.

You may note the FP4 isn’t cheap nor does it have much space for extra circuitry.

An alternative battery and back cover may work but is more than likely a crazy idea from Fairphone’s perspective.

This may be a starter

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In order to quench our energy thirst, if we want to maintain our addiction to our standard of living, we really need to produce way, way, WAY more clean energy than we do now. So all energy you produce, but you yourself don’t use, is greatly appreciated by someone else to use. If you don’t let other people use your produced clean energy, they will most definitely use dirty energy.

Using it only for your own energy usage might be legally accepted, but as long as we all don’t stop thinking that way, the climate won’t stop changing either.

And it is very legit for a company to give you no choice but the sustainable choice. In fact, I sometimes get really, really… I mean really angry-angry that governments still allow companies to give an un-sustainable choice to consumers. Coffee made from the bitter tears of slaves, for instance. How can we accept such grave crimes against humanity?! Are we really thát perverted?

Fortunately, there is extreme metal music to listen to, and calm me down ;-).

Anyway, I don’t want to sound rude. But could it be that you’ve ‘locked’ yourself into unsustainable behavior when you replaced all cablechargers by wireless chargers, and find the thought to go back to less luxury, not very appealing?

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It most definitely holds that the most environmentally friendly thing to do is eat people. Everything we do has a carbon footprint associated with it. Yes your breathing is one of it. Also that we do not really have a choice to completely forgo animal protein because evolution did not account for that sorry(I know vegans and vegetarians… blablabla the question there is how much malnutrition or supplements, which are made from animal protein are you comfortable with).

We are talking 11Wh battery. Do you know how insignificant that is compared to everything else we take for granted? I also like induction cooking… and boiling just one liter of water is 1kWh/K you do for your coffee every single day. that is 100kWh just for your coffee and your bath water is not even in there yet.

The fact that I have to live like a hermit while people are allowed to throw away aluminium macbooks every year to “upgrade” is really the big fat lie around this conversation. It is insignificant for a bit of convenience and it is not like I am running a private jet to work. Every little bit counts, sure but we have tons of huge fish to fry before it is my lost 5-6Wh/charge we need to worry about. It has been pushed onto us to worry about this paralyzing many by the decision fatigue it causes just to try to cut back on insignificant things because you so want to do the right thing. Ultimately it is very much not really up to the individual. This is why I do not think the wireless charging vs eco-friendliness is a productive debate. It is not like I am charging my car… btw. maglev trains exist :smiley: and some people made car charging mats that do 88% efficiency(but that is really a bit too much even for me. I can plug the car in. Has a much sturdier connector too…

Industry gets to pump shit out and in the grand scheme of things my little saving there does not register especially if I got it from clean energy. It is below what transmission losses the grid burns away with its existence. This is not the type of cutback that would save anyone but it makes life a bit shittier and when you wear out the connector on the bottom of the phone a new part will be shipped to you and your savings are gone right there.

The point is that this is neither here nor there. I do a lot on reducing my packaging waste as much as I can, but again as you said how much of it is actually up to me if all the store sells is packaged in so much plastic, I do actually run a relatively lean household on electricity(I do not use gas) and follow my meter with a relatively close eye, I make sure the tech I am using has a good power factor(which costs more than the cheapest bulbs from china) so God Almighty please at least let me have this much convenience that I would not have to deal with breaking ports on phones dangling on cables. I do think I deserve a little slack here.

Another interesting “it all adds up” kind of legislation was in the EU when they made manufacturers get rid of all the spare wheels… not even a space saver is in a new car most of the time because omg people lugging around and extra 25kg in a 2ton car… The car’s losses are mostly the air resistance(SUVs helloo!) and when you do get a flat now you need to get someone else drive to you just to replace it. This is insane. It is all the effort and inconvenience with none of the benefits in the end.

And we did not even touch on people and companies creating heat on purpose instead of pumping it on large scale with heat exchangers and heat pumps. And what is even worse they use MWh-s to do this just to heat a single home most of which have a gas heater and some people even cook with it. The cement industry pumping out shit ton of CO2 just so people and corporations can buy up concrete boxes to use as piggy banks ruining the housing market in the process because those homes will never be lived in. Do you see why this 5Wh here or there is such a non-starter timewasting argument. I probably lost more energy just typing this response to this on my computer :smiley:

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Not only is it not in the plans it’d be virtually impossible according to the little I know about electronics

While I think the only way to move on is to have abundantly sustainable electric power for everything and it should not matter if there are some losses in the summer (in the winter it heats, so no losses) you have mixed quite a few unrelated things in the post that don’t belong there.

You try to compare your behavior against whom?
The fictional SUV driver who drinks a Liter of coffee a day and throws macbooks away?
And because you are better you deserve a feature in product the maker did not include?
I don’t think that’s how it works - or maybe I am eligible for some features too?

spoiler text

this:

is really not thought out. You have read or heard that somewhere but I suggest you to research that topic. Protein is an abundance, you could argue about B12 as so many do but its made like yeast and most of it is made to supplement those suffering animals in meat production.

its 100-200Wh
I think you just made some math error

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My entire ramble was about the fact that it is immeasurably insignificant, several decimals lower than a rounding error. One day of my existence costs magnitudes more energy than what my wireless charging will lose so the it adds up argument I think is not valid because whether you save or not this little energy is not going to manifest in any significant way to what it takes to keep you alive.

Where the spare tyre comes in is that it has tangible benefits to have one and the extra energy to carry it around is not significant enough to forgo the benefits of not having to order a flatbed… same with not having to worry about breaking the charge port and then having to order one in just to replace it at(who is to calculate) some energy cost. Phones are wireless in everything they do and there is room for improvement with the frequency of charging that apparently improves efficiency. I admit I do not quite understand how that correlates but some guys reached significantly higher efficiencies than currently available qi chargers, which would make even less sense to argue against in the future on the basis of efficiency. It is not like the tech has no benefits. It does.

You are right… stupid comma vs decimal point conondrum :smiley: oops(I looked it up at the wrong place), ok so 100Wh for the 1 liter coffee(I do not drink any, some people drink a ton) maybe it is more like half a liter(In Starbucks it certainly is a huge cup for many… I am totally stupid about coffee…). The transportation food and heating still holds but I think I must make a change to the space heating as well because there I also made the same decimal comma error… so it is usually charged in MJ… so that will be in kWh-s then instead of MWh-s. And average car fuel tank or battery is between 50kWh - 150kWh ballpark right? Trains are specifically much more efficient of course so using the train…

So yeah now it is up to about a rounding error my 5-10Wh depending on how bad my wireless charging equipment is.

Is this still worth it not having? Anyways I do not want to persuade anyone. I came here for an answer on why it is not offered. I was told. End of story. Thanks everyone.

As a farewell tho… here I cooked dinner for an hour that added up to somewhere above 1kWh if I read this graph correctly according to my electricity supplier. This is a simple ceramic hob not an induction one.

And the continuous 200W during the day from 830 is my computer. The 80-100W at night are fridge and house electrical systems on standby.

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I guess because most people can charge (quicker, and more efficient) with USB-C which has QC and PD and is user replaceable.

I own a Pine Power and I only use wireless charging when I don’t have any other way available. Because a magnetic USB cable is approx just as quick and secure.

Thanks for your thoughts, I really enjoyed the read!!

I agree with @Zoltan_Kozma . The amusing thing about the article that Fairphone post to support this decision is that it raises the question if wireless charging is OK when factoring in cable issues;

“Nobody has done a study about how much electricity is used to manufacture and sell replacement cables, but I’m willing to bet it’s at least as much as wireless chargers can waste. When you add in the cost of repairing or replacing phones because of a failed charging port, I’m certain it’s more. These costs could all disappear if every phone used wireless charging as the only way to charge the battery.”

An interesting related article; Capitalism is killing the planet – it’s time to stop buying into our own destruction | Climate crisis | The Guardian

Key quote ; " We focus on what I call micro-consumerist bollocks (MCB): tiny issues such as plastic straws and coffee cups, rather than the huge structural forces driving us towards catastrophe."

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I wonder how FP could combine wireless charging and a removable battery. Has any phone done that before?

Hi tintin825 Welcome to the forum

I’m not sure who wrote the bit you have in quotes

As far as MCB goes you are of course not just correct but missing the MC (Macro Consumerism)

MC is made of all the MCB and it doesn’t really matter which MCB you invest in it all adds to the MC

Macro/ micro ~ Consumerism is the problem, but that’s not limited to the human animal or even animals. Each of us is the problem, but not each others. However we do fight over the limited resources.

So Fairphone have limited resources and recognised that one of those are other people who make the phones etc. so they try to treat them better and in the process some others loose a bit of their comforts.

It’s comparable to wired earphone v bluetooth / wired charging v wireless

Yes there were some Windows Phones in the early days and nowadays Gigaset has some phones, the GS5 for example:
https://www.gigaset.com/hq_en/gigaset-gs5/

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Yes, the samsung S5 and the Note 4 comes to mind. They had back covers from Samsung that had the wireless charging coil embedded and they connected in with some connectors to the charging circuitry on the phone.

This can get problematic though if the phone is allowed to flex a lot or the user is very dirty and the phone is full of lint. Anyone who had one of the LED covers for the Note 4 can tell you that :slight_smile: That also had connectors that liked to not reach quite as hard and far as they were supposed to… there is definitely room for improvement to that design which is why another option is to have the battery include the charging coils, which can of course introduce other issues such as even more heat… and there is the cable connected back panel, which definitely would work but would make the phone finnicky to open a tiny bit.

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