Is Wireless Charging Bad For Your Battery? Here's Everything You Should Know

Is wireless charging bad for your battery? It's the question that has popped up in practically every smartphone users' head, especially now that wireless charging pads, or Qi, compatible devices are becoming more the norm than ever.

And with battery health degradation always being in focus, it certainly makes sense to know all the ways you can avoid speeding up the process.

But is wireless charging something that plays a part in accelerating battery degradation? Or is this whole thing a bit of a myth?

Here, we'll take a closer look into the answer, plus explore some other ways you can preserve your battery health.

Is Wireless Charging Bad For Your Phone Battery?

The question itself appears to be where to confusion starts, as wireless charging is generally deemed safe for smartphones and battery health.

There are a few things that can degrade battery life that is not unique to wireless charging.

According to this study of the factors that affect lithium-ion battery degradation, these include "temperature, charge and discharge voltage, current, and the level at which the battery is charged or discharged."

Results did not show that wireless charging has an effect on battery life, however, it does mention (amongst other factors' that "high and low temperature shorten battery life."

And that's where people can start to associate wireless chargers with potential battery degradation, as they can in some albeit seemingly rare cases, get a little hotter than their wired counterparts.

Read More:Does a case affect wireless charging?

How Can A Wireless Charger Get Hot?

Let's just stress here, first and foremost, that this isn't exactly the 'norm' with wireless chargers, but appears to be a potential outcome of a misalignment of coils between phone and charging pad.

According to this article, if the phone and charging pad is not aligned, "the handset and the charger will dual out, causing the phone and the charger to produce excessive heat..." Also, some thick phone cases trap the heat emitted out of the handset, causing the phone to overheat.

As per the earlier thesis, excessive heat (or cold) is sub-optimal for battery health, but surely there's a way to avoid this, right?

Most wireless chargers give an indication of when they're aligned, so as long as you're sure it's charging you should be able to avoid this potentially happening.

Furthermore, if you've decided to opt for the Mag-Safe options from the latest iPhones, then you can rest easy that it's aligned in the correct way to avoid this entirely.

Read More: Does the Samsung A53 have wireless charging?

How Else Can You Prevent Battery Degradation?

There are some other ways to help keep battery degradation at bay, or at least slow it down a little.

Apple lists a host of ways to get the most out of your battery lifespan here, many of which would be the same for phones in general. They include:

• Store it half-charged when you store it long term.
• Remove certain cases (metal, aluminium) during charging.
• Update to the latest software.
• Avoid extreme ambient temperatures (which we know is important).

The key takeaways here revolve around not 'maxing out' your charge regularly and avoiding any cases which could increase heat, as well as making sure your software is up to date.