But other than making a great gift, whats the point?
The rest of the time, I charge the watch overnight, every night, on the nightstand.
But every other gadget I have just gets hooked up to a cable whenever it needs juice.
Claudio Schwarz / Unsplash
This can be Velcroed under a desk, or secured on a hallway table.
Ditto an Apple Watch charger, and of course any devices from brands that are not Apple.
This is not to say that a charging mat is useless.
Steve Johnson / Unsplash
Its just that it offers a fixed, and rather specific, set of charging options.
If you regularly charge the exact combo of gadgets, then its perfect.
Wireless Weaknesses
There’s another downside to charging with contact pads rather than plugging in cables.
This is a waste of energy, but thatheat is also damaging to your batteryand reduces its life.
Apple seems to be moving to induction charging as its default for mobile and wearable devices.
And that’s a problem.
“Maybe Apple can come up with a better solution that doesn’t waste quite so much energy.”
And fellowforum member Piggie agrees: “We currently have around 15 Billion mobile devices in the world.
However, it’s not all bad news.
For example, an iPhone could charge an AirPods case via the MagSafe ring on its back.
In fact, you might already charge an iPhone from an iPad, with the correct cable.
But there are other advantages to reverse charging.
Apple already kind of does this.
The downside is, this all produces heat.
Apples charging mat wont fix that, but its ever-more power-efficient computers are at least helping.
