iPhone MagSafe compatibility?

[agoldman]

I imagine it's probably a normal last generation generic "fast" charger. Too bad we can't just pop it out and stick a mag one under there without taking up a usb port. Either way, I'm sure it will be fine for normal use. My full charge happens at home over night.

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[generaltso]

Yeah but in most vehicles those ports only supply 5 watts, which is not enough to keep the phone charged while using maps and steaming audio.

Really? That’s only around .4 amps. I’d be surprised if the ports in the Mach-E are that low, especially the USB-C ones. But I guess we don’t know yet.

 

[Accord07]

I am not going to worry about the output level of the wireless charger, even though I have no experience with the one installed in the Mach-E (other than that my current phone is too large to sit on the mat without hitting the "ridge"), because I have had a factory-installed Qi charging pad in my minivan for 3.5 years now.

But let me talk about wired connections first. There are three types of USB ports, Standard Downstream Port (SDP), Charging Downstream Port (CDP), and Dedicated Charging Port (DCP). SDP is the original specification, allowing a maximum of 500mA current draw; CDP was introduced later and when last revised in 2012 specified the port needs to provide at least 1.5A (if the connected portable device requests it); DCP is for charging only and has the two data pins shorted, it is used in wall chargers. My van came with three USB ports in 2017, one CDP and two DCP. The CDP port is wired to the head unit, in order to allow the data transfer required for Android Auto and CarPlay operations. The two DCP ports are not wired to the head unit - I can tell because after engine shut-off the two DCP ports loses power immediately, while the CDP port remains powered until the driver door is opened (and the head unit powers off). In the beginning Android Auto was not usable on long trips because my phone's battery would slowly drain. After some investigation I found the problem: even though Honda claimed the port was rated for 2.5A my Galaxy Note 4 drew only up to 500mA and averaged less than that. So I did some reading on the various types of USB ports, and suspected that the phone thought the port was SDP rather than CDP. But how to prove that hypothesis? One day I recalled that when I had bought a third-party car charger for the original 10-inch Galaxy Tab five years earlier, the instructions said an included USB male-to-female adapter had to be used for non-Apple devices, otherwise charging would be really slow. Having just read the Battery Charging Specification rev 1.2, I suspected that the adapter simply had the data pins shorted to let the attached device know it is a DCP port. Apple devices do not follow the industry standard and do not rely on shorted data pins to detect DCP. Took me a while to find that little adapter, and once I used it between the CDP port in my van and my phone, charging current jumped immediately to over 2A. So I was right, there was something wrong with the handshaking and the phone erroneously thought the port was SDP and never asked for more than 500mA. Sent my feedback to Honda. It took over a year but two OTA updates later, it was fixed (although not mentioned among the bug fixes in the release notes).

At the time I happened to have a spare Nexus 6, which had Qi charging. On the Qi charging pad in the same vehicle, it averaged 750mA. However, whenever plugged in it always switched to charging over USB, even though it could charge faster over Qi, so Qi charging didn't resolve the problem. A couple of months later, my Galaxy Note 4 died and it was replaced by an S8+. In stock Android on Nexus 6 charging always defaulted to USB, which was dumb; but in Samsung's release it would compare how much it could draw from each of the two sources and then utilized the faster one: if I placed the already plugged-in S8+ onto the wireless charging pad, it switched to charging wirelessly within seconds; if I then moved the USB connection to one of the two DCP ports, it switched to USB charging within seconds. So my workaround (until Honda's OTA update fixed it) was to plug in the S8+, and place it on the wireless charging pad. 750mA doesn't sound a lot, but it was sufficient to keep Google Maps running for navigation while playing music through Spotify, while slowly charging up the battery.

The first two revs of Qi 1.0 and 1.1, allow up to 5W; in Qi 1.2, released in 2015, in addition to the Baseline Power Profile (5W) it also supports Extended Power Profile (15W). I don't know the specs of the wireless charger in my van, but I am pretty sure it supports up to 5W only. With the Mach-E developed well after EPP became standard, I certainly hope they sourced parts capable of EPP. Fingers crossed, but my bet is that even when charging at 5W, it will be sufficient to keep my current phone running Android Auto over Wi-Fi, without slowly draining the battery. The only difference between running Android Auto over Wi-Fi vs. USB is the physical transport: the "projection" involves the phone encoding an h.264 video stream (800x480 minimum, 1280x720 or 1920x1080 if the head unit supports it, the 8-inch touchscreen in my van has a 1280x720 resolution) interleaved with PCM audio and delivering that to the head unit for display (and in return the head unit sends touchscreen input back to the phone), over an IP network connection.

 

[Kamuelaflyer]

Dude, that's above and beyond information. You might make @trutolife27's nice list. Well, for a day or 3 anyway.

 

[Dangerfish]

Yeah but in most vehicles those ports only supply 5 watts, which is not enough to keep the phone charged while using maps and steaming audio.

Huh? I drove to Colorado this Summer in my Subaru with Nav and audio running the entire drive. 12 hours. My iPhone X wasn't even remotely discharged when we arrived.

 

[methorian]

Huh? I drove to Colorado this Summer in my Subaru with Nav and audio running the entire drive. 12 hours. My iPhone X wasn't even remotely discharged when we arrived.

Yea. My 2019 Hyundai Veloster keeps my iPhone charged while using Apple CarPlay/Waze no issue. In fact it’s generally the only charging my iPhone gets. I have a 45min commute which almost always charges my phone up to full, even with nav/CarPlay.
I have a USB power meter I’ll test out on the Mach-E once mine arrives.
I do believe that wireless charging will probably end up draining the battery a bit while using wireless CarPlay though. That’s the biggest reason I may try to get a MagSafe puck in there.

 

[Accord07]

I test drove a First Edition yesterday and a Premium today. During the second test drive I placed my Galaxy Note 10+ (the phone is too large so I removed the mat so that the phone could sit flat over the Qi charger), with Android Auto running over Wi-Fi. After the test drive I looked at AccuBattery app on my phone and realized there had been a net loss in battery charge. Just to make sure it was not a fluke, I ran another app Ampere for a bit, then compared it to the Qi charger in my Honda Odyssey parked right next to the Mach-E, I was not imagining things: my phone was charging considerably more slowly in the brand new Mach-E than it was doing in my almost four-year-old minivan. It's not exactly a deal breaker for me and the results could be dependent on the phone model, but this is disappointing nonetheless.

 

[jhalkias]

I test drove a First Edition yesterday and a Premium today. During the second test drive I placed my Galaxy Note 10+ (the phone is too large so I removed the mat so that the phone could sit flat over the Qi charger), with Android Auto running over Wi-Fi. After the test drive I looked at AccuBattery app on my phone and realized there had been a net loss in battery charge. Just to make sure it was not a fluke, I ran another app Ampere for a bit, then compared it to the Qi charger in my Honda Odyssey parked right next to the Mach-E, I was not imagining things: my phone was charging considerably more slowly in the brand new Mach-E than it was doing in my almost four-year-old minivan. It's not exactly a deal breaker for me and the results could be dependent on the phone model, but this is disappointing nonetheless.

Are you sure it was charging the whole time? Did it possibly slide off the sweet spot with the mat removed?

 

[machefan]

Are you sure it was charging the whole time? Did it possibly slide off the sweet spot with the mat removed?

The sweet spot is an issue for my iPhone 12, I just need to put a piece of rubber on the left side to keep it in place. Due to sliding around even if minute the charging stops.

 

[Accord07]

Are you sure it was charging the whole time? Did it possibly slide off the sweet spot with the mat removed?

That's why I did it the second time with the vehicle parked, the only app running in the foreground was Ampere to measure the current. In the Odyssey the current started low and then ramped up over a few seconds, in the Mach-E it stayed low. Certainly it could be a handshaking issue rather than a hardware limitation, I certainly hope it is the former because that can be resolved by a software update.

 

[Jako607]

That's why I did it the second time with the vehicle parked, the only app running in the foreground was Ampere to measure the current. In the Odyssey the current started low and then ramped up over a few seconds, in the Mach-E it stayed low. Certainly it could be a handshaking issue rather than a hardware limitation, I certainly hope it is the former because that can be resolved by a software update.

2 questions:

1) Did you have the screen on the entire time? I would definitely think that with screen off and wireless charging taking place, even at low rate of charging, that you'd lose battery.

2) What OS is your Note 10 running? I thought wireless Android Auto was currently broken on phones running Android 11 (although I'm told Ford is working on a fix with Google within a couple weeks), are you still on 10 or is your phone with 11 working?

 

[Badger_Prof]

The sweet spot is an issue for my iPhone 12, I just need to put a piece of rubber on the left side to keep it in place. Due to sliding around even if minute the charging stops.

I have just been tossing my iPhone 12 Pro onto the charging pad and it works every time. It is in an Apple silicone case so there is no sliding around.

 

[Accord07]

2 questions:

1) Did you have the screen on the entire time? I would definitely think that with screen off and wireless charging taking place, even at low rate of charging, that you'd lose battery.

2) What OS is your Note 10 running? I thought wireless Android Auto was currently broken on phones running Android 11 (although I'm told Ford is working on a fix with Google within a couple weeks), are you still on 10 or is your phone with 11 working?

The screen was off while running Android Auto. I rarely use the Qi charger in my minivan because the head unit does not support Android Auto over WiFi, so the phone is almost always plugged in. My previous phone was an S8+ that was used in the same vehicle for two and a half years, in the first year I had to rely the Qi charger because the phone was not pulling enough charging current from the USB port due to a bug in the software driving the infotainment system, until Honda addressed that bug through an OTA update; while stock Android running on Nexus 6 always defaulted to charging over USB, assuming that it delivered a higher current, Samsung's software would compare the two possible charging sources and always picked the one with a higher current. With the screen off Qi charging was enough to keep Android Auto and Google Play Music running on S8+, while slowly charging up the phone battery; if the screen stayed lit, the phone battery would slowly drain.

Android 10. Having owned three different Samsung phones over the years, I am used to being far behind stock Android releases

 

[Jako607]

The screen was off while running Android Auto. I rarely use the Qi charger in my minivan because the head unit does not support Android Auto over WiFi, so the phone is almost always plugged in. My previous phone was an S8+ that was used in the same vehicle for two and a half years, in the first year I had to rely the Qi charger because the phone was not pulling enough charging current from the USB port due to a bug in the software driving the infotainment system, until Honda addressed that bug through an OTA update; while stock Android running on Nexus 6 always defaulted to charging over USB, assuming that it delivered a higher current, Samsung's software would compare the two possible charging sources and always picked the one with a higher current. With the screen off Qi charging was enough to keep Android Auto and Google Play Music running on S8+, while slowly charging up the phone battery; if the screen stayed lit, the phone battery would slowly drain.

Android 10. Having owned three different Samsung phones over the years, I am used to being far behind stock Android releases

Gotcha. Is wireless Android Auto working for you on your Note? If so, stick with Android 10 for a while until Ford can figure out a fix. I can confirm that on my Samsung S21 running Android 11 it will not connect at all. Like others, the vehicle won't even give you an option to select Android Auto on my phone. Wireless charging works fine but I haven't tested if it's enough to keep my battery from falling...I'm guessing it's be fine cuz I'm not running AA since it won't connect ?

 

[1pt21Gigawatts]

The sweet spot is an issue for my iPhone 12, I just need to put a piece of rubber on the left side to keep it in place. Due to sliding around even if minute the charging stops.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/1-3Pcs-Mag...ging-Magnetic-For-iPhone-12-Pro-/373383885906

This is what I bought, to put under the rubber mat. Comes with adhesive and already arranged. Super low profile, looking forward to installing them. Think it’ll be perfect, they’re the same magnets they use in the phones and to build the cases!!

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