Conventional wireless chargers can not completely relieve users from connecting the cable to the smartphone. The problem lies in the efficiency of their work: from zero to one hundred percent of the charge you have to wait almost twice as much as usual. It's all about insufficient power and losses in the inductive mode of energy transfer. Because of this, wireless charging is most often bought to put near the bed and charge the smartphone at night, or put on the office desk for constant recharging during the day. It seems to be normal usage scenarios, but still I want to completely abandon the connection of the smartphone over the wire and use the mats even when there is very little time for charging.
To solve this problem and give smartphone owners a unified user experience, Sony has released the Sony WCH20, a high-power wireless charger. The Qi standard for wireless energy transfer includes the following accessory specifications: 5 W power and 1 A output current. Some manufacturers are trying to speed up the process by increasing these indicators, but few have been able to achieve a dramatic change in speed due to technical limitations and safety issues. However, Sony engineers were still able to find a way to make their wireless charging to come close to the performance of a wired network connection using the QuickCharge 3.0 adapter.
When creating the Sony WCH20, engineers were able to increase the characteristics of wireless charging to a power of 9 W and a current of 1.8A, for this it was necessary to make the accessory larger and complicate the design. With induction energy transfer, there is a problem of increased heat dissipation, which is aggravated by the ability to perform demanding tasks on a smartphone during charging and even more heating. To avoid this and make the WCH20 as safe as possible, it has an active cooling system that removes warm air through the perforations on the sides of the charge. The cooler is installed very small, so that the noise of its work could not be heard even in the night silence, but at the same time powerful enough to effectively cool the charging station and the back panel of the smartphone.
The need for active cooling led to an increase in the size of the accessory, and indirectly - made the work with wireless charging more convenient. The smartphone is located on it not horizontally, like most other manufacturers, and tilted. The part on which the smartphone rests is detachable - it rests on a magnet, which allows you to choose between portrait and landscape orientation of the device during charging. The first will be convenient for viewing notifications and responding to them, the second - while watching a video. By the way, an adapter with QuickCharge 3.0 support and a USB Type-C cable are used to connect the charging station to the outlet, they are bundled with the accessory.
The Sony WCH20 charger works with any smartphones that support charging according to the Qi standard, but high efficiency (charging in less than 2 hours) is possible only when using the Xperia XZ2 smartphone. The fact is that the charging speed depends not only on the output power and current strength, but also on the capabilities of the energy receiver in the smartphone. For its flagship, Sony has improved the wireless charging module in the smartphone so that it maximizes the power of the WCH20. Users of this wireless charging will no longer need to look for an adapter and wire with QuickCharge in situations where you need to quickly get as much battery power as possible.