Wireless charging while iPhone X is powered off?

mikenitso wrote:

It's more about the quality of charge. A powered down iPhone is better charged when you turn it back on.

You're making this up. There is no such thing as "quality of charge;" charge is charge, and it makes no difference whether it is charged powered on or off from the battery's perspective. There is no such thing as "better charged" either; the battery is charged to 100% or it isn't. How it got there doesn't matter, and regardless of how you charge it the charge process stops at exactly the same point with exactly the same battery capacity. You can test this for yourself with a battery monitoring app such as Battery Life.

There's actually an advantage to the battery charging it powered on; the power source runs apps rather than the battery. As some apps (mail, for example) use power most of the time, if the phone is off they must wait until you turn it on to do their job. By then you have unplugged the power source, and the background apps must use battery power when running to catch up with what they missed when the phone was off, rather than "wall" power. This means that the battery will have to be charged sooner than if you left the phone on. And it will increase the number of charge cycles over time, wearing out the battery faster.

Regarding wireless charging, it is an active process from the phone's perspective, and I (speaking as an electronics engineer) don't see how it is possible to have an active process with no power going into it. So I suspect the the Apple support rep is wrong with respect to wireless charging, or the rep misunderstood your question.

Wireless charging requires an active circuit in the phone to work. Wired charging does not. So it is not possible to have wireless charging when the phone is powered off. It cannot be fixed. And I do not believe your iPhone 8 would charge when powered off. Even if it appeared to be off there had to be power on inside for the wireless charging circuit to work.

But what's the point? There is no benefit to charging with it powered off. None. At best it may complete a charge 5 minutes faster. But most likely it won't even do that.

Yes. If powered off the phone will power on to recharge. Here is the wireless charging page -How to wirelessly charge your iPhone X, iPhone 8, or iPhone 8 Plus - Apple Support

You cannot and it is not a flaw/bug/oversight. Your question was answered and that answer was backed up by an electrical engineer.

Perhaps it is part of making sure that your iphone or battery is not damaged while charging wireless - without the iphone on and no direct connection through a wire, how does it monitor the power through a magnetic field?

The coil in the pad is a transmitter, the coil in the phone is a receiver, if the iphone is off how is anything monitored from something that does not transmit

Hi, I'm having the same problem and it begun after the iOS update from 10 to 11 version. I have a Belkin wireless charger and I could charge my iPhone 8 turned off before the update.

After the update the problem begun!!! All the two iPhones 8 that had the iOS updated, changed the behavior and the last one that I didn't updated stayed charging wirelessly and turned off! After that, I've updated the last one and it begun to turn on again as you described: put it over the charger then turns it off, after some few seconds it turns on by itself.

I had the same problem with an old iPhone 5S and a wired charger but the problem was fixed later.

And I agree with you: I'd like to have the option to charge it turned on or off!!!!!

I, particularly, prefer to charge it turned off!!!!!!!

I hope this problem be fixed with the new iOS update!!!!

Hi, Lawrence.

I don't know what happens inside the phone, but externally the iPhones 8, all three with iOS 10, were charged wirelessly powered OFF before the iOS upgrade to 11 version!!!!!! They don't accept any touch at home button!!! This behavior has changed AFTER update to iOS 11!!!!

And, sorry, I'm not here to lie about these symptoms, they really happened even if an electronic or electric engineer said they didn't!

This is garbage. No it's not a massive flaw. I wish you people would stop it with that nonsense. On Androids you can do this. On an iPhone, you can't If you have the device powered off, and you plug it in, it starts up. What's the difference? Because you read some old wives tale?

In addition, the device must be plugged in anyways, sleeping and connected to WiFi to backup to iCloud. Is that a flaw? Or do I have to hear everyone complaining that they weren't too smart enough to back their phones up?

Once again, Mr. Finch and the rest of the regulars on here are correct.

Nobody said have the device powered off and then plug it in or put it on the charge pad. We put it on the wireless charge pad and then power it off which used to charge the phone and didn’t turn back on but apple have recently changed this so it auto turns the phone back on, but when you plug the phone in and power it off it still stays off so why can it now only be done one way and not both when it used to

You used to be able to wirelessly charge whilst your phone was turned off. I have an iPhone X and the belkin qi wireless charger and have had both of these since the X’s release date and up until the last 2 updates this hasn’t been possible. This for me is a massive flaw as why when my phone is plugged in and charging it can be turned off but when it is wireless charging it can’t. I like my phone to be turned off whilst at night and think it’s also good for the phone to be turned off so it’s not being over worked. I think with the latest flaw in the wireless charging it isn’t offering the same as if you physically plugged in a charger so is a pointless thing on the phone and before people do say why don’t you just plug it in on a night my reasoning is why should I have to as I’ve bought a phone which was way overpriced and it should be all singing and dancing not half way there due to something apple want to change and not tell anyone

Hi, Boofitz.

I think the only way to solve our discussion is to downgrade to iOS 10 and test it with wireless charger!!!!

I had three iPhones 8 with this behavior! I bought them on November and bought 3 Belkin wireless chargers! All of them were charged turned off, I mean, the display and 3D Touch home button didn't accept any command! If it was charged turned on, the home button would accept the touch and would turn the display on! And, believe or not, the battery was charged regularly!!!!!!!!

Lawrence Finch wrote:

Yes, but that that's a different issue, and it's why you should only use Apple or Apple-certified power sources. The claim under discussion is that a phone that is charged to 100% when powered down has a better quality of charge when turned back on that one that was charged to 100% while powered on.

100% is 100%. And if you use a battery analyzer it will not see any difference.

By power sources I'm assuming you mean a power adapter?

However, 100% isn't necessarily 100%. Doesn't Apple fudge on what it displays as percentage charge remaining on iOS devices? It can report 100% while it's at a true 96% and still charging. It can say it's fully charged when it's only at 97%. A lot of people report that their iPhones are displaying that it's still "100%" even though they've used it actively for a half hour.

You're the resident battery expert here. Doesn't a typical charging algorithm charge to 100% and then stop charging until the charge level drops (through self-discharge or supplemental current) to less than 95%? This is transparent on Mac notebook computers; it might display "97%" and "Battery Is Charged". For some reason there's something that Apple does differently with iOS devices, and it might have something to do with what the OP is experiencing.

Lawrence Finch wrote:

mikenitso wrote:

It's more about the quality of charge. A powered down iPhone is better charged when you turn it back on.

You're making this up. There is no such thing as "quality of charge;" charge is charge, and it makes no difference whether it is charged powered on or off from the battery's perspective. There is no such thing as "better charged" either; the battery is charged to 100% or it isn't. How it got there doesn't matter, and regardless of how you charge it the charge process stops at exactly the same point with exactly the same battery capacity.

I've never heard this one before. However, I did have a housemate who insisted that if you boiled water for tea in a kettle, the tea stayed hotter longer than if you boiled the water in a microwave.