Living with Nillkin Wireless Charging Pad

I have a bad habit: I charge everything at night, take it out the next day, and only plug it in again when I get home the following evening.

Day after day, over and over.

Thanks to this stupid habit, my battery-life requirement when buying anything is “lasts a day.”

The Nexus 6 has a decent-sized battery, but its endurance isn’t great — probably the price of that 2K screen.

It used to be that the Nexus 6 lasted exactly one day for me, including the evening run on the way home. But lately, the Moto 360 and a string of Android Wear updates have been eating into my phone battery more and more. Staring at the Bluetooth power draw in Batterystatus, I felt a bit helpless. At that point you’d get home with 20% left, barely enough for the run afterward. Which meant I had to find something to charge the phone with at work — and for someone with a “one charge a day” compulsion, that’s a real itch.

So I wondered: does everyone else just leave their phone plugged in whenever there’s a charger around? I asked on G+ and found that most people do. Since the Nexus 6 has always been on wireless charging at home, with a Lumia Qi pad, I figured I’d just get another wireless charging pad.

I bought a Nillkin wireless charging pad on sale for under 100, and even though it was cheaper than the Lumia one I bought earlier, it’s surprisingly better to use.

First, this thing has a rubber anti-slip surface; the Lumia is just bare plastic. Second, when charging, the whole rim glows a nice blue, while the Lumia just has a single white dot. And finally, it charges more reliably than the Lumia — if the Lumia isn’t placed just right, it keeps cutting in and out.

On top of that, this one charges over plain MicroUSB, whereas the Lumia one needs its own plug.

By every measure it’s way better than the Lumia pad. That 150 I spent at the start of the year was a waste.