Technology

The first thing I noticed when I got a wireless charger was that I still needed a cable for my charging pad.

Tbh Wireless charging is bad for batterys so is a thing that I don't use. (Also fast charge is bad too)

It's not more convenient. It doesn't matter whether you have a cable running to your desk or whatever to be plugged into the phone or to have placed a charging pad there. The clutter is the same unless you use a lamp or table with a built in charging pad. Plugging in a phone takes 2 secs, about the same as placing the phone correctly on the pad. IMHO wireless charging is just a way to squeeze now money for useless stuff out of the customers. Don't forget that wireless charging is also less efficient. It takes longer, wastes more energy, requires more materials to be used in the phone and the pad and thus crates more waste at the end of it's life, so from an environmental POV you should avoid it.

P.S.: I used to charge my previous phone wirelessly, I'm back to wired charging with my current one for above reasons.

I used to have a phone a few years ago with wireless charging and personally found no real use for it.

Thing is, you need a spot for the charging pad where you'll regularly put down your phone. That's pretty much only ever gonna be the case, if you're glued to your desk for your day job.
Ideally, you do still need to get up every few minutes, though, so that unplugging and re-plugging your phone actually becomes annoying.

Or I guess, it's also cool, if you get annoyed by using your phone with the wire plugged in and you often just quickly pick up your phone to answer text messages.

Otherwise, I doubt it makes up for the annoyances of wireless charging, which are:

• Always have to put your phone down in (relatively precisely) the same spot.
• Charging is slow.
• Can't really use your phone if you really do need it to be charged, because then you shouldn't pick it up from the charging pad and you may push it off of the correct charging position when you tap the screen.

I'm guessing, so many phones have it despite that, because as far as I'm aware, it just requires some copper wire rolled up to a coil in the back of the phone, so it's presumably quite cheap to include.

Well, I know people who break their MicroUSB type B every time and the connector on the phone. I don't think that MicroUSB type C will improve the situation at all so wireless charge is an advantage.

I don't use it because it's bad for batteries, I constantly have to fight it to position it properly, and they charge much slower at the same price point.

I have a wireless charger next to my bed and on my desk. I just set my phone down on it without much thought. Chargers are cheap so having dedicated charger for each room was less than $20 USD.

Wireless charging is often slower than wired, so I only use it when I know I got a couple of hours where I don't need to touch it. Can't really use while charging, it's too awkward.

i've never used it and it's very inconvenient 😎😎😎

I used to have it, and really liked it.

It saved on wear and tear of both the cable and, particularly, the connectors too.

I have been charging my phone wirelessly for the last 3 years. I put my phone on it over night and is fully charged in the morning. Much easier than trying to fiddle with a cable in the dark.

My current phone doesn't support wireless charging but it was convenient in a way. Being able to drop my phone on my magnetic cellphone holder in the card and have it charge at the same time in a single motion was nice. No need to fiddle with any cable, which is nice in a drive-thru with contactless payment.

It also spares the USB port from additional wear. I also kinda expect this to become the norm at some point.

Buy magnetic USB cables. They are dirt cheap, protect the USB ports, are way more efficient that wireless charging and less bulky.

Good question, I'd say having 2 day battery instead of 1 day is probably more useful than wireless charging. I have never used it though.