Quote Originally Posted by veti View Post
Brief aside, before I get on with the actual question:
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I really hate it when Googling a question gives me 15 authoritative answers, all unanimously on the same side, and none of them addresses the question I actually typed in.

Because when I ask Google this question, it tells me in very... patient, ABC terms that no, wireless charging is not bad for phone batteries. Did I ask about batteries? I did not. I carefully left the word "battery" out of the query entirely. I don't understand batteries, and I don't care, as far as I'm concerned they're chemistry and chemistry is witchcraft, I'm happy to take the advice of people who understand that stuff but I have no aspiration to be one of them. No, I want to know about the rest of the phone.

And not one of these oh-so-reassuring-buy-our-tat-now merchants even mentions that.

OK, enough ranting. Sorry. Now to the serious question.

My partner's iPhone display weirded out a few months ago. We got it fixed, but last week it broke down again. So the heck with that, it's new iPhone time. But my partner had, for over a year now, been charging the old iPhone using a third-party wireless charger (because the original, wired connector was getting worn and frayed). Is it possible that that may have contributed to its abrupt breakdown?

Intuitively, it seems to me that an electromagnetic field that's strong enough to induce enough current to recharge a phone's battery, must inevitably also induce currents in all other parts of the phone as well.

Now, in most components - basically, each individual chip - the components are miniscule and therefore so will the currents be, rendering them unnoticeable. But there's one big exception: the screen controller. This is (inevitably) about as big as the screen itself, more than big enough (I imagine) to get quite an appreciable current flowing. It may even be more than the component itself is designed or tested to handle.

Someone, somewhere must know about this. I imagine some manufacturers have even tested it. But Google won't tell me about it, because the answer is drowned out by these spam merchants trying to sell me tat, who are, unanimously, being suspiciously specific in their cast-iron guarantees that it won't harm the battery.

Does anyone here know anything relevant to the actual answer?
A wireless charger works by passing an alternating current through an induction coil creating an electromagnetic field. That field is received by an induction coil on the smartphone producing an AC current. A rectifier then converts the AC to DC which charges the battery.

All conductors have have some inductive capability but it takes an induction coil to gather enough current to cause problems. If something else on your phone could act as an induction coil, it too would receive an AC current. Transistors are not compatible with AC and would possibly become damaged.

I assume phone designers take this into account when designing a wireless charging phone and I am not sure of a scenario where a damaged component could act as a coil. Maybe one of the antennas? I don't know.