I agree totally. Not to mention that wireless charging uses about 40% more power. Which for charging phones is a small amount until you think of every person on the planet charging their phone every day.
> Which for charging phones is a small amount until you think of every person on the planet charging their phone every day.
It is a small amount of power though.
There are about 4.68 billion mobile phone users; let's assume each has one phone. Let's be conservative and assume that all these phones have high-end battery packs, on the order of 4,000 mAh. Let's be even more conservative and assume each phone is used to depletion and recharged each day. Let's assume a voltage of 4V, so we end up with 2.7e14 joules used recharging mobile phones per day. In 2014 (so conservative, for 2019), human civilization produced 23,816 terrawatt-hours of electricity, or about 8.6e19 joules per year or 2.6e17 joules per day. (Let's also assume electricity production and consumption are equal.) Even under this very conservative estimate, cell phones charging accounts for 0.115% of world electricity consumption. Increasing that figure by 40% is negligible.
Thanks for doing the math but I don't think one product that consumes one one thousandth of the world's energy production is negligible. (How many coal power stations is that?) And a 40% increase in this consumption for a very minimal increase in 'convenience' (itself debatable) is not negligently wasteful.
> And a 40% increase in this consumption for a very minimal increase in 'convenience' (itself debatable) is not negligently wasteful.
That's your opinion. I have a different opinion. How do we choose which of us is right? In general, we decide on the allocation of scarce resources through markets and price signals. Electricity is metered almost everywhere. If wireless charging's 40% increase in energy use doesn't hurt adoption, it means that the utility gained from wireless charging outweighs the resources consumed. That you personally have different utility function doesn't invalidate anyone else's, and you certainly don't get to make people use your utility function instead of their own. If you think electricity is too cheap and doesn't incorporate necessary externalities, you can argue for some kind of extra climate tax. But arguing against specific products here because you personally don't find them useful isn't the right approach.
