Samsung PowerShare — Avoid using it.

Sharafi

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Jul 20, 2019

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Adapted from this Quora answer, as appropriate.

Samsung PowerShare is a new feature to the Galax S10, allowing one device to wirelessly charge another device (over Qi), usually another mobile phone.

Now, what is the problem?

Wireless charging could be very convenient, but in PowerShare, power gets wirelessly transferred from a very limited power source: A mobile phone battery; which does usually not nearly match the capacity of a powerbank, the portable accessory one should always bring with oneself anyway. Always.

Wireless charging is not nearly as efficient as charging via the copper wires of an USB cable, but that’s no problem when charging from the relatively abundant energy source of home.

Additionally, the PowerShare energy donor is unable to use his/her phone while it is laying front-facing down on a table.

But here comes the main problem of PowerShare: Batteries, very unfortunately, get OLD.

Battery aging

Not only does battery aging (similar to how humans horribly decay when aging old), lead to less capacity, but also to higher relative usage at same absolute usage. A vicious cycle, the same one that lead to the iPhone 4s iOS 9 performance disaster and unexpected shutdowns due to terminal battery voltages of below 3.0V.

In addition, battery aging limits one of the features I appreciate most about a mobile phone: Fast charging!

Because chemical processes in an aged battery slow down, the maximum safe terminal voltage of around 4350 mV gets reached at lower charging speeds already, limiting the maximum charging speeds.

Samsung’s 2015 disaster

In early 2015, when Samsung decided to switch to non-removable batteries on the Galaxy S6 (next to other not-so-good decisions such as removing USB 3.0, water resistance, MicroSD, battery capacity, MHL and many menu features about which Hyun Yeul Lee even proudly bragged, but that’s another story), Justin Denison uttered the following argument:

• “We refused to do this for some time, until we were absolutely sure that people would feel confident charging their phones!”

Two fundamental problems:

• “We refused”? Who asked (intimidated Samsung) for it? Random iSheep who would be better off purchasing Apple’s historically inferior technology? Or random false friends on Internet forums? The same ones who said that mobile phones do not need more internal storage than 32 GB + MicroSD is not important?
• How am I supposed to feel more confident charging my mobile phone, if I know that there is a dead end in battery lifespan of an old battery I can not simply replace with a young one? (also known as battery gerascophobia)
• …especially when feeling guilty each time charging the phone to 100%, which is not that healthy for the lifespan of Lithium-Ion/Polymer batteries.

Of course, a mobile phone repair shop or Samsung service could do it, but:

• It takes much more time.
• It might threaten the warranty.
• Most importantly: On water-resistant mobile phones such as Samsung’s flagships since 2016, Huawei, etc. or great outdoor mobile phones from uleFone and Doogee, replacing the battery might as well mean sacrificing water resistance.

Verdict

PowerShare wastes precious battery lifespan, amplifying the worst problem of mobile phones with non-user-replaceable batteries.

Whose idea were non-user-replaceable batteries again? Correct. The same religious party that brought the screen-circumcising notch (2017) and fragile designs (2010) to the market.