Linus reviewed (roasted) our phone | Fairphone reacts

Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca to Android@lemmy.world – 327 points –
Linus reviewed (roasted) our phone | Fairphone reacts
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I can't believe some of the points Linus made against the Fairphone, especially given he's onboard with the same compromises for the Framework laptop. 🤭

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Energy lost as heat during the power transmission. It's what makes the phones warm during wireless charging. That heat decreases the lifespan of the battery and makes the phone uncomfortable to use, which is why wireless charging speed is limited once the phone reaches a certain temperature. I specifically avoid using wireless charging on my Pixel to extend its battery lifespan since it will live for 7 years and battery replacement is expensive. New wireless charging standards could probably play with frequency and other parameters in order to reduce energy lost as heat, similar to how increasing the voltage in a circuit decreases loss to heat for the same cables.

Yes but that's mostly relevant when using fast wireless charging. Slow wireless charging doesn't get that hot. And it reduces friction on the USB port.

Furthermore this phone has a swappable battery so it would be fixable if the battery degraded

I can think of reasons to not to include wireless charging such as repairability. The efficiency is bs as people can still charge wired if they want to.

Pogo pins on the back of the phone, pads on the cover with the coil, and bam, you have a removable wireless charger and a replaceable battery.

I haven't seen a single device (other than a two way handset) that uses that sort of function. You would have to slot your phone into a giant plastic base and I just don't know why anyone would want that. Anything but that and the charge pins would be exposed and thusly a fire hazard. Spring loaded pins are a dinosaur in today's tech market and no one, let alone a company that is trying to reduce waste, would use such an outdated and niche system.

I don't think you fully understood (my fault for a shitty explanation)

So you have the pogo pins on the back of the body of the phone, they connect to the back cover of the phone, the cover that covers the removable battery. The back cover has the coil integrated into it.

You can make the coil be removable from the back cover to reduce waste if you decide to replace the back because it's scratched or broken.

The pogo pins are literally just to connect the wireless charging coil to the back of the phones cover when you close the phone up.

i’ve got a samsung chargepad thing, it has a builtin little cute fan (internal, not blowing on the phone) - the phone is elevated, laying on a lip so it does not have direct contact. it’s always cool to the touch even tho it charges relatively quick (80% charge limit tho)

Maybe so, but you've lost energy to making that heat, now you're spending more energy to remove it. Ergo, efficiency.

Something can be technically correct. Efficiency.

And not matter at all because phones don't need any real amount of power.

Not when it's explicitly defined.

And did you just call a 70% efficient device (staggeringly low by engineering practices in even the 60s) a negligible amount of power? Do you have even the remotest inkling of just how many billions of these chips are produced annually? Assuming only 0.1% will go in phones with wireless charging and that they will only be used for that year, we are talking about an enormous quantity of energy that is wasted. It would be enough energy to push the earth into the sun.

You're being very dismissive about something you obviously have no real experience in, and there would be nothing wrong with not knowing something if you weren't making claims simultaneously. Efficiency is a well known, inarguably defined, rigorously studied, timelessly practiced, design concept that the CEO has an obvious working knowledge of. There is no "alternative truth" that is being ignored here, only ones that should be.

Oof, so much hate when confronted with the simple fact that over the course of a phone's life, wireless charging doesn't have more than a slight negative impact. And one that isn't going to be noticed by 99% of users. They will notice the convenience wireless brings though.

But continue to cry from your basement.

No hate. Just annoyed. But you'd probably be annoyed too if I insisted on my uninformed opinions about selling herbalife.

I guess airflow especially between the phone and the pad could mitigate the heat. I see some charging pads integrate this now.

I specifically avoid using wireless charging on my Pixel to extend its battery lifespan

You shouldn't bother. I exclusively charge my Pixels wirelessly and keep them around forever as development devices and the batteries on all of them are fine.