All rechargeable batteries begin to degrade after a certain number of charge cycles. A charge cycle is the number of times the battery is used to capacity, whether:
- fully charged then drained completely
- partially charged then drained by the same amount (e.g. charged to 50% then drained by 50%)
Wireless charging has been criticised for increasing the rate at which these charge cycles occur. When you charge your phone with a cable, the cable is powering the phone rather than the battery. Wirelessly, however, all the power is coming from the battery and the charger is only topping it up—the battery isn’t getting a break.
However, the Wireless Power Consortium—the global group of companies who developed the Qi technology—claim this isn’t the case, and that wireless phone charging is no more damaging than wired charging.
For an example of charge cycles, batteries used in Apple iPhones are designed to retain up to 80% of their original capacity after 500 full charge cycles.
Post time: May-13-2021