Magnets, how do they really work anyway?
January 6, 2016 7:52 AM Subscribe
The magnetic car mount for my Nexus 6 is not playing nice with the wireless charger I got over the holidays. I do not want to compromise and yield either of these wonderful devices as a sacrifice to the gods of incompatibility. Any tips on how I can make them both work to the best of their respective abilities?
Phone: Stock Nexus 6 via Google Fi
Phone Case: Membership Gift Case from Google Fi Welcome Kit
Car Mount: Koomus Magnetos CD Magnetic Cradle-less Smartphone Car Mount
Charger: TYLT VU 3 Coil Qi Wireless Charger
Basically there is a metal plate that the car mount utilizes that is somehow interfering with the induction/electromagnetic field that the Qi charger uses to power the device.
I have tried moving the magnetic sticky plate around a fair bit with nothing really working for both devices. Either the holding power of the phone in the car is too touchy or the device's screen orientation doesn't play nice with the required placement or the charger either doesn't charge the device or charges it for 1 second then stops then restarts ad nauseam.
The phone has not been rooted because I don't want to deal with the overhead/stress of maintaining it outside of stock roms/kernels nor risk compromising my Google Fi compatibility. I think there's some hacks that could potentially help by either A) disabling the magnetic sensor altogether or B) gimme more options for mounting the magnetic plate the car mount requires by allowing the homescreen to pivot into landscape mode gracefully.
The case doesn't seem to impact things much one way or the other but I'd prefer to keep it as well because it's a nice little case that keeps my phone that much safer without adding much bulk/weight.
Am I missing something obvious that might make things work? Any fix, be it electrical or mechanical or software based or lifehack-ish, is fair game. Financial fixes, such as getting replacement things or, god forbid, tossing an item altogether, need not apply because that's basically the trivial solution to this equation.
Thanks!
Phone: Stock Nexus 6 via Google Fi
Phone Case: Membership Gift Case from Google Fi Welcome Kit
Car Mount: Koomus Magnetos CD Magnetic Cradle-less Smartphone Car Mount
Charger: TYLT VU 3 Coil Qi Wireless Charger
Basically there is a metal plate that the car mount utilizes that is somehow interfering with the induction/electromagnetic field that the Qi charger uses to power the device.
I have tried moving the magnetic sticky plate around a fair bit with nothing really working for both devices. Either the holding power of the phone in the car is too touchy or the device's screen orientation doesn't play nice with the required placement or the charger either doesn't charge the device or charges it for 1 second then stops then restarts ad nauseam.
The phone has not been rooted because I don't want to deal with the overhead/stress of maintaining it outside of stock roms/kernels nor risk compromising my Google Fi compatibility. I think there's some hacks that could potentially help by either A) disabling the magnetic sensor altogether or B) gimme more options for mounting the magnetic plate the car mount requires by allowing the homescreen to pivot into landscape mode gracefully.
The case doesn't seem to impact things much one way or the other but I'd prefer to keep it as well because it's a nice little case that keeps my phone that much safer without adding much bulk/weight.
Am I missing something obvious that might make things work? Any fix, be it electrical or mechanical or software based or lifehack-ish, is fair game. Financial fixes, such as getting replacement things or, god forbid, tossing an item altogether, need not apply because that's basically the trivial solution to this equation.
Thanks!
Yeah, a metal plate in the way of the electromagnetic field generated by the charger will definitely mess things up. I imagine if even a small part of the coil on your phone is covered up by it, it'll make the charger ineffective.
Several years ago I had a Palm Pre, one of the first phones with wireless charging. The charging base was magnetic, and there were four metal discs around the outside of the charging coil on the back case of the phone (see the left side of this picture). Could you figure out where the coil is on your phone, and place several thin pieces of metal (small thin washers, perhaps) around it? The magnet may not hold as well, however.
posted by zsazsa at 8:17 AM on January 6, 2016
Several years ago I had a Palm Pre, one of the first phones with wireless charging. The charging base was magnetic, and there were four metal discs around the outside of the charging coil on the back case of the phone (see the left side of this picture). Could you figure out where the coil is on your phone, and place several thin pieces of metal (small thin washers, perhaps) around it? The magnet may not hold as well, however.
posted by zsazsa at 8:17 AM on January 6, 2016
Response by poster: I should have put this in the OG post but I did find this set of images that 'shows' the phone side of things, with respect to the sensors for the screen at least I think, which I also forgot to mention clearly is another complication. That is to say that the car mount can, if position dictates, turn off the phone's screen which, obviously, renders it useless for navigation.
The phone coil itself, I'm not so sure of but I think this is it in this image from this reddit comment.
The Qi charger is branded as having a huge sweetspot, unlike some cheaper chargers that I purposefully avoided, so I don't think that's the issue here.
posted by RolandOfEld at 8:24 AM on January 6, 2016
The phone coil itself, I'm not so sure of but I think this is it in this image from this reddit comment.
The Qi charger is branded as having a huge sweetspot, unlike some cheaper chargers that I purposefully avoided, so I don't think that's the issue here.
posted by RolandOfEld at 8:24 AM on January 6, 2016
Ultimately I think you are going to have a hard time getting wireless charging + magnetic mount both working simultaneously. Wireless charging relies on creating a magnetic field. Having other magnets or metal plates nearby to the wireless charging dock is going to interfere with that process.
posted by vegetableagony at 12:33 AM on January 7, 2016
posted by vegetableagony at 12:33 AM on January 7, 2016
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by RolandOfEld at 7:54 AM on January 6, 2016