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Blue Quark

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 25, 2020
196
147
Probabilistic
I own a Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra, and for the most part the ownership experience has been great. I also own a Galaxy Watch Active 2, and paired with that phone, the combination is awesome.

However, when it comes to wireless charges — and, in particular, car wireless chargers — I've been having some recurrent problems.

Now, I'm not posting this here on MacRumors out of any expectation of technical support, but rather some feedback. Also, as some of you might remember, I had briefly owned an iPhone 11 some time prior to buying the S20 Ultra, and I'd had some disappointments at that time which may or may not any longer be truly relevant to me. So, I'm also looking for feedback which is holistic enough to include thoughts about the iPhone platform.

When I charge my phone using a wireless car charger (and I've now owned a few) in some cases it will not charge the phone, but in other cases — which are the ones in interested in for this post — they'll work properly for about 1-4 weeks, and then they start acting up in some manner, and basically I can no longer charge my phone using that unit. As I don't own any other wirelessly chargeable phones, I cannot check to see if the unit is damaged (i.e. it no longer properly charges anything) so I'm not in a position to troubleshoot the hardware further.

Some time ago, I happened to talk to one of the people who did service work on smart phones in one of these businesses you see in a Walmart or in it's own unit in an office plaza, and what he said at that time is Samsung has had an issue with the batteries and power systems in some of their phones, and the S20 series is one of them. I can't recall if he had included the S20 Ultra by name or not.

Now, I own a number of desktop wireless charges, some of which are Samsung units and some of which are not. All of them are several years old except for the Samsung trio charger I bought a few months ago. And none of them, whether they can charge my phone at the full rate it's capable of or not, have ever once developed a problem charging my phone.

So, my questions are:

Does anyone else here have a Samsung S20 Ultra? And if you do, have you ever encountered these or any other bizarre charging-related problems?

Did anyone else here who owns some other model of Samsung Fallacy phone had wireless charging issues?

Does anyone here who has a relatively recent model of iPhone (let's say, from the X up thrive the 12 series) had these problems?

At the time I'd bought the 11, the current major release of iOS had not yet come out. I've since had a chance to play with it and it seems nice. Also, in that same intervening period of time, I've bought an M1 MacBook Air.

What's the community's thoughts here on me switching to an iPhone with an Apple Watch? I own a smart watch for health monitoring as well as all the other fun and mundane reasons one might use it.
 

5105973

Cancelled
Sep 11, 2014
12,132
19,733
We don’t own S20 or S20 Ultra now, but my husband and I didn’t have any particular problems with wireless charging. I had the regular S20 and he had the Ultra. His car charger has always been very finicky so it’s not fair really to report any difficulties with it.

In my opinion, an Apple iphone paired with an Apple Watch is a very good experience. There are some things I enjoyed with FitBit and Samsung watch and a Samsung fitness tracker, but I felt Apple made the experience seem more polished. It probably helps that in their own plodding way they haven’t changed the Apple Watch much since it’s introduction so the experience feels consistent over the years with expected incremental improvements. Android wearables change more noticeably from year to year, in my opinion.

Some people hate MagSafe but I’ve been using it a lot. I love the certainty of it being properly connected to my iPhone. I even use it on my S21 Ultra with some cases. It doesn’t work with my folio case that holds the S Pen.

That being said, I like my S21 Ultra more than my 12 Pro Max because it has S Pen and it has a better display for watching movies and videos. I love the periscope zoom. As I write this I realize I’m too much into straddling between both worlds to be of much help advising to pick between them. I can’t. My experiences with the Android/Tizen watches is dated. I chose Apple Watch with finality upon leaving my Samsung Watch Active original edition on the shelf.
 

LIVEFRMNYC

macrumors G3
Oct 27, 2009
8,877
10,987
I used to have the S20 Ultra. Never experienced wireless charging issues. But I don't have a wireless charger in my car.

This could be a compatibility issue with your car wireless charger.

For home, I've been using Samsung charger model EP-PG950 for years, and it's one of the very few chargers that never gave me a problem on any of my previous and current devices. Even with iPhones.

6de7180abc91b91426b460720da6d587.jpg



I would google to see if you car wireless charger has issues with other model phones as well.
 

Blue Quark

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 25, 2020
196
147
Probabilistic
We don’t own S20 or S20 Ultra now, but my husband and I didn’t have any particular problems with wireless charging. I had the regular S20 and he had the Ultra. His car charger has always been very finicky so it’s not fair really to report any difficulties with it.

In my opinion, an Apple iphone paired with an Apple Watch is a very good experience. There are some things I enjoyed with FitBit and Samsung watch and a Samsung fitness tracker, but I felt Apple made the experience seem more polished. It probably helps that in their own plodding way they haven’t changed the Apple Watch much since it’s introduction so the experience feels consistent over the years with expected incremental improvements. Android wearables change more noticeably from year to year, in my opinion.

Some people hate MagSafe but I’ve been using it a lot. I love the certainty of it being properly connected to my iPhone. I even use it on my S21 Ultra with some cases. It doesn’t work with my folio case that holds the S Pen.

That being said, I like my S21 Ultra more than my 12 Pro Max because it has S Pen and it has a better display for watching movies and videos. I love the periscope zoom. As I write this I realize I’m too much into straddling between both worlds to be of much help advising to pick between them. I can’t. My experiences with the Android/Tizen watches is dated. I chose Apple Watch with finality upon leaving my Samsung Watch Active original edition on the shelf.
Oh, ok. Thanks! I have looked quite a bit on the Internet as well as on Samsung's own message boards and I haven't found anything relevant to my situation. What makes the situation kind of bizarre is that, in the normal course of troubleshooting, one would expect a result where my phone had no issues at all (in which case I obviously wouldn't be asking questions) or it would have issues with any wireless charger, car or home, that I used. For it to ONLY have problems with the more mobile range of chargers (and this has now occurred on several different brands) makes it just about impossible from my position to troubleshoot in any meaningful way.
I used to have the S20 Ultra. Never experienced wireless charging issues. But I don't have a wireless charger in my car.

This could be a compatibility issue with your car wireless charger.

For home, I've been using Samsung charger model EP-PG950 for years, and it's one of the very few chargers that never gave me a problem on any of my previous and current devices. Even with iPhones.

View attachment 1809983


I would google to see if you car wireless charger has issues with other model phones as well.
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find anything specific. There's always people in online reviews praising or bitching about whatever they chose, but beyond that, there just isn't much. To be honest, I'm surprised Samsung doesn't make a wireless car charger for their phones. Their desktop units work flawlessly. So, what gives?
 
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