So imagine this. You got a hot date who's hanging on to your every word,
and she's asking you what's next on the docket for the evening.
You bust out your phone to get directions to an incredibly romantic used video game shop,
and suddenly you notice it's deader than your last relationship.
You start to panic, but suddenly your date pulls out her phone,
holds it against yours and what you initially think is some kind of weird courtship ritual,
but then you see that your phone is working again thanks to wireless power sharing.
So you immediately have two thoughts. One, she's a keeper.
And two, how in the heck does wireless power sharing work?
Well, we explained the basic principle behind wireless charging in general in our previous video
on distance charging, which you can check out up here. But the idea is that when you run a current through a coil of wire and bring it close to
another coil of wire, a physical phenomenon called electromagnetic induction induces a current
in the second coil. This is how regular wireless chargers work,
including the relatively common Qi chargers and even electric toothbrushes.
But what makes wireless power sharing different?
So the biggest difference is that your phone ends up charging another device directly from its main
battery. Up until now, traditional wireless charging has used a base station that's plugged
into a wall outlet, or it's taken the form of a wireless battery bank.
The advantage to wireless power sharing is that you don't need any extra equipment,
like an external charger or a power bank, and the phone itself doesn't even have to be any larger.
It simply uses a small induction coil built into the phone's body.
Currently, the most well-known phone that features this technology is the Samsung Galaxy S10,
which can not only power up the company's Galaxy Watch and Galaxy Buds,
but also any other phone that supports Qi charging.
Now reportedly, the recently launched iPhone 11 lineup also contains the hardware to support
wireless power sharing, but Apple has disabled the feature for now for reasons that aren't
totally clear. Perhaps the performance wasn't up to scratch.
Indeed, wireless power sharing does come at a rather steep energy cost.
In a best-case scenario, current technology will provide around 500mA of current,
which isn't all that much, so if you're trying to charge a smartphone with a 3500mAh battery,
that means it would take roughly three and a half hours just to get the charge up to 50%.
However, the Galaxy S10 reportedly loses around one-quarter of its battery life
for every hour that it has wireless power sharing enabled,
so you shouldn't expect to get anywhere even close to fully charging another phone anyway.
Wireless power sharing is pretty inefficient in that less than half of the power used up
by one battery will wind up in the other battery.
So right now, the technology is best suited for quick top-ups when you need a second phone to
just work for a short period of time, or if you're charging up less power-hungry devices
like smartwatches. However, as phone battery technology progresses,
we may end up seeing more robust wireless power sharing solutions.
For now, it's a good way to keep you going in a pinch so you can think of it as like an energy
drink for your phone that hopefully won't give it the jitters half an hour later.
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