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Customer Review
Reviewed in the United States on January 15, 2017
Before anything else, I want to state that this review may have very little to do with Anker and more to do with an emerging technology - I think it still needs some time to mature. We've got native charging on our Samsung S7 devices, and do have cases. I figured it would probably be easier to trigger charging if we didn't have cases, but to be frank, I wasn't interested in testing this because I have a case for a reason. Removing the case (and its protection) to charge is not a trade-off I was willing to make. To me, the point of wireless charging is convenience, and even the small step of removing the case isn't convenient.
Now, after starting to use the charger, it seemed that finding the "sweet spot" to trigger charging was a bit of a chore. Sometimes a twitch of just a couple millimeters seemed to trigger it. It also seemed that the charger was defective. About one out of every three nights, the phone would register it was on a charger, but come morning, the battery didn't charge at all - it would still be nearly dead like it was the night prior. I wondered if this was just me, but my wife had the same issue. I decided to give it another week to see if we could figure it out.
Eventually, I had a revelation - I rotated the charger itself. We had been charging our phones with the cord extending from the charger to the left or right of the phone because that was most logical for our setup next to the bed. However, I turned my charger so the cord was pointed "up and down" in orientation to the phone and suddenly the issue of no charging went away. It now charges predictably every night.
Now, note that I didn't really read the instructions (I'm a guy, and thought it was pretty much foolproof) - it may actually say you need to orient the charger properly, I don't know. If it doesn't say that, it definitely should, assuming it's not just our devices. In addition, the issues of finding the "sweet spot" to trigger charging didn't go away either. However, I can now say the charger works properly and without much hassle. I'm still giving it 4 stars because of the small annoyances to trigger charging and nervousness about whether it will, in fact, charge my phone, but overall I'm now satisfied.
Now, after starting to use the charger, it seemed that finding the "sweet spot" to trigger charging was a bit of a chore. Sometimes a twitch of just a couple millimeters seemed to trigger it. It also seemed that the charger was defective. About one out of every three nights, the phone would register it was on a charger, but come morning, the battery didn't charge at all - it would still be nearly dead like it was the night prior. I wondered if this was just me, but my wife had the same issue. I decided to give it another week to see if we could figure it out.
Eventually, I had a revelation - I rotated the charger itself. We had been charging our phones with the cord extending from the charger to the left or right of the phone because that was most logical for our setup next to the bed. However, I turned my charger so the cord was pointed "up and down" in orientation to the phone and suddenly the issue of no charging went away. It now charges predictably every night.
Now, note that I didn't really read the instructions (I'm a guy, and thought it was pretty much foolproof) - it may actually say you need to orient the charger properly, I don't know. If it doesn't say that, it definitely should, assuming it's not just our devices. In addition, the issues of finding the "sweet spot" to trigger charging didn't go away either. However, I can now say the charger works properly and without much hassle. I'm still giving it 4 stars because of the small annoyances to trigger charging and nervousness about whether it will, in fact, charge my phone, but overall I'm now satisfied.
