Which Wireless Charger To Buy To Charge My Mobile Phone: Standards, Charging Speed And Featured Models

If your phone supports wireless charging, you will find that the accessory to charge it is not included in the box, so you will have to purchase it separately. In this wireless charger buying guide, we analyze what factors to take into account, wireless charging standards, and some notable models.

Before you start: Wireless or contact charging?

When reading “wireless charging” many may think of a type of charging that allows us to power the battery of our mobile phone remotely, while we have it in our hands. Nothing could be further from the truth: for practical purposes, wireless charging is more “contact charging”, that is, we have to support the phone on the charging base.

Wireless charging as we know it is induction charging or electromagnetic charging because that is its working principle: the charging stand generates an electromagnetic field that is captured by the mobile phone, something that only occurs when the device enters into contact. The rest of the time, the charging dock remains on standby.

To make this possible, both the charger and the device have electromagnetic induction coils. The mission of the dock coils is to convert the electricity it receives from the plug into high-frequency alternating current from which it generates the electromagnetic field.

The charger sends a signal permanently waiting for a response. When you get it, you start transferring energy through the field.

What to take into account when buying a wireless charger

Loading standards

Wireless charging is not new and unfortunately for users, there is no universal standard. As with posts, users would like a standard that would allow us to use a wireless charger for all compatible mobile phones, but currently, several charging standards coexist Qi, PMA, WattUp, and Cota…

• The Qi charging standard is the most popular (pronounced “chi”) and even some manufacturers that had opted for other standards have made their charging docks compatible with Qi. Without dwelling too much on how Qi and other wireless charging standards work, this system is produced using fairly high frequencies, requiring that the coils be very close to each other and that the phone must be placed in just the right place to improve its efficiency.

• The second most popular standard would be PMA (or Airfuel), a charging system whose operation is based on magnetism but is less efficient than Qi. In its favor, it allows larger electromagnetic fields thanks to which the phone doesn’t need to be in a certain position. Likewise, with PMA it is possible to have larger charging surfaces, making it possible to charge several devices at the same time.

• Fast Wireless Charging is the wireless charging system developed by Samsung for which it has marketed its chargers. This is a standard compatible with their high-end phones, which also support Qi.

• Wattup allows you to charge devices that are up to 5 meters from the charging dock, something that could be considered truly wireless charging as such.

• Cota can be charged up to 10 meters away, thanks to the use of wireless connectivity such as WiFi or Bluetooth. On the other hand, it is an extremely slow charging system, only 1 W.

So what charging standard is supported by my phone? In practice, the Qi standard is the majority, making it the most common standard for wireless chargers. If your phone allows wireless charging, it will support the Qi standard, so any Qi-certified charger will do.

How fast is wireless charging?

Despite having been with us for years, wireless charging has become popular more slowly than one might expect. One of the reasons is the speed with which devices charge.

The Qi standard, the most popular of all of them, is capable of charging devices with up to 15W, although it is common to find chargers from 5 W to 10 W. To give you an idea: if you are charging your phone at 5 Watts and at the same time using GPS or streaming music apps, you will discover that you consume more energy than the charger supplies.

However, it is of no use if the wireless dock is capable of supplying 15W if your phone cannot charge wirelessly at that speed.