I have a Samsung Galaxy S7 and ever since it was bothersome to fiddle around with the micro-USB charging cable.
I still dont understand why they didnt put a Type C USB port on that mobile phone but ok.
Everytime I wanted to charge it either in officer or at home I had to use that original cable and carry it from A to B. And everytime I wanted to use the phone as storage device I had to unplug the wall adapter.
Yes, your impression is right. I am a lazy person.
The week before Xmas I decided to search for an alternative and ordered a Wireless charing station EP-NG930. Relative cheap offer on Ebay.
Yes.
You can argue about the sense and non-sense of using wireless chargers.
They are never as effective as cable chargers since the inducted energy has to pass multiple layers of plastic, glass and whatever material your case is made of.
This inefficience causes heat and good chargers even have a build in fan for cooling.
Ok my charger arrived two days prior new year and due to all the renovation stuff I was doing I got the chance to test this device on 2nd January.
To my surprise it didnt charge.
Ive tried to reposition it without success.
Ive removed my case (a leather wallet) and all of sudden it did charge.
Now my odyssey started.
That was an inacceptable condition. To remove the wallet for charging is even more bothersome as pluging a cable in.
The internet, which usually is a good source of information is like a black hole on this topic. People know it exists but nobody really knows how its working.
Hundreds of pages with speculations, threads which tell that chargers wont work with cases, other threads which tell that they work even with thick cases because of the QI standards.
I started to search for the type of charger that I had at hands and also started to search for the serial number.
Well, Samsung and most Android forums flag this serial number as a fake device.
Ok, I guess if you buy something cheap you get something cheap.
Now I got interested in this matter.
Are other chargers better or different.
Thats really hard to tell.
On the internet you cant get any objective information about this topic.
The QI standards tell which specifications a charger should have and the distance it should start charging is also pretty comfortable (considering the official standards).
Unfortunatly the manufacturers (nearly no manufacturer) publishes anything about what the charger can do.
Not the QI version, not the charging distance in mm, nothing about how good it can charge at all.
Like I said... a black hole.
Last week I decided to try a different charger from a different manufacturer (actually I have no idea who manufactured my faked EP-NG930 ) so I went to the local MediaMarkt (I guess every european knows these stores) and bought an average priced charger for testing purposes.
At home I plugged it in... and It was charging... at least for 10 seconds then the charging stopped.
I tried it multiple times... and the charging always stopped after a few seconds.
Without my wallet case it btw. charged without any problems.
Lesson learned.
Charging works but case thickness is really a problem for chargers.
Today I wrote a long mail to the seller from which I got the faked Samsung charger, explaining that the sold device is not an original one, that the serial number is flagged as a fake, that the device most likely isnt even supporting current standards and that the Samsung quick manual that came with the faked charger is a copyright violation as it clearly claims that this is a Samsung product (and not just a replica).
It didnt even take 5 minutes until I got an apologize, a refund via paypal and the money to cover the costs to send the faked product back.
The seller gets a positive rating from me.
The charger is meanwhile on the way back to the seller.
And while I was already dealing with that kind of stuff I took the other charger back to the MediaMarkt. I explained that I want to give it back and asked the salesman, if I could test a few devices in the shop in order to check if they are working any better.
This clearly speeded up my testing procedure as the salesman opened all the different packages and multiple deviced could be tested.
In the end the original Samsung EP-NG930 was a working one, even with this thick case.
Twice as expensive as my faked version but thats not the point... its working.
My advice... dont buy such products online, especially if they appear cheaper than normal.
Compare the serial numbers if you are not sure about your device.
And if you are absolutely not sure then ask a salesman at a shop if you can test the devices with your phone (if neccessary all of them).