Nearly 80 car models, from Audi to Hyundai, Nissan and BMW, offer in-cabin wireless charging based on the electromagnetic Qi charging specification.

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With Apple adopting wireless charging in iPhone 8 and X categories, many users will be tempted to leave their phones on an inductive charging pad all day. Will that hurt the battery?

Apple chose to use the Qi specification, which uses inductive charging technology, for its iPhone 8 and iPhone X lineup of smartphones.

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Samsung committed to the same specification for its flagship Galaxy smartphones; in all, about 90 smartphone models use Qi today, making it the industry’s most popular among three standards.

In addition to desktop charging stations (typically in the form of small charging pads), the automotive marketplace has also adopted in-cabin wireless charging.

Nearly 80 car models, from Audi, Chevrolet and KIA to Hyundai, Nissan and BMW, offer in-cabin wireless charging based on the electromagnetic Qi charging specification.

There are more than 5,000 public Qi charging locations worldwide, according to the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC), the entity in charge of the Qi standard.

Major brands like McDonald’s, Marriott, Ibis and others have built Qi into their properties. Airports, such as London Heathrow, Philadelphia and others around the world, have Qi charging stations. And businesses like Facebook, Google, Deloitte, PwC and Cisco have built Qi into their corporate offices.

“Over the last few years, one of the major delays for [manufacturers] wanting to introduce wireless charging solutions, particularly in the automotive in-cabin market, is the wait to discover which standard Apple may choose for any wireless-charging-enabled iPhone,” said Vicky Yussuff, IHS lead analyst for wireless power.

“Now that Apple has decided to use the Qi standard, transmitter shipments into the in-cabin market will likely surge.”

Consumer demand for wireless charging in the office and public spaces is heavily driven by adoption of devices in the mobile phone market, both in terms of volume and technology choices. So now that Apple has chosen to use the Qi standard of wireless charging, it makes it easier for suppliers of chargers in public infrastructure to provide suitable charging solutions that will work with the devices, Yussuff said.

Along with third-party wireless charging manufacturers, Apple also plans to release its own AirPower wireless charging station designed to charge up to three Apple products at once, including the iPhone devices, Apple Watch and Apple AirPods through the charging case.

On the left, a more centered iPhone 8 receives power from an illuminated wireless charging pad. On the right, a slightly askew iPhone 8 cannot connect to the wireless charger.

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The wireless power market as a whole is expected to grow to one billion receiver units shipped by 2020, according to IHS.

The 2016 IHS Markit consumer survey showed that one in four people has now used wireless charging, and more than 98 per cent of those would choose the feature again on their next phone. Both consumer demand for the feature and the volume of enabled devices are growing each year.

“Samsung’s success with implementing wireless charging over the last two years coupled with Apple’s iPhone announcement demonstrates that wireless charging technology is clearly achieving mainstream adoption in the mobile phone market, and the scope of its application is expected to quickly follow suit in other applications,” Yussuff stated in a recent industry report.

For several years, restaurants, coffee shops and airports have been piloting the use of wireless charging for customer convenience.

With wireless charging adoption becoming widespread, the impulse for many users will be to just plop their smartphones down on the charging pad where it will remain fully charged all day long.

Is it bad to fully charge your smartphone?

With greater ease of charging via wireless technology, the question becomes: Is it bad for your mobile device battery to be fully charged all the time?

Venkat Srinivasan, director of the Argonne Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science (ACCESS), said that while you cannot overcharge a smartphone or tablet battery, as the electronics will not allow it, keeping it fully charged will hasten its degradation.

“Frankly, the higher you are in the [charge] state, as you creep up to 90 per cent, 95 per cent to 100 per cent charge, the more degradation the battery will see,” he said.

As a lithium-ion battery charges and discharges, ions pass back and forth between a positive electrode (made of lithium-cobalt oxide or lithium iron phosphate) and a negative electrode (made of carbon graphite).

As a battery charges, the positive electrode gives off lithium ions that move to the negative electrode and are stored as energy. As the battery discharges, those ions move back to the positive electrode to be used as electricity. As those lithium ions move back and forth, the electrolyte that acts as the transport medium degrades over time.

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