Mike Adams Live: Samsung's Galaxy S7 battery case uses Qi wireless charging to keep your phone powered up

Sunday, February 21, 2016

Samsung's Galaxy S7 battery case uses Qi wireless charging to keep your phone powered up

The Galaxy S7 brings a considerable bump in battery capacity over the Galaxy S6, and the Galaxy S7 edge's battery even outdoes the marginally-larger Galaxy S6 edge+ launched late last year. Even still, there are folks who will have higher battery life expectations, and for those who push their phones hard it's going to come down to adding a battery case or a mobile battery charger.

Samsung has made a really interesting battery case for the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge to launch right alongside the phone, and while it offers the same tradeoff of additional size for battery capacity as any other battery case, it has a few tricks up its sleeves to differentiate it.

From the start, everything's relatively basic as far as the case portion is concerned. The hard rubber case — in either silver or black — snaps around the exterior of the phone, and is layered with a textured material that should make it easier to hold onto its added girth. A set of LEDs on the top show you a power level while a power button turns on the flow when you need it, and a micro-USB port (oddly, also on the top) is how you'll charge it up.

Now, here's where things get a bit odd. Instead of plugging into the Galaxy S7's own micro-USB port on the bottom of the phone for power, the case actually incorporates a Qi wireless charging coil to transfer power into the phone. Of course wireless charging isn't quite as efficient as a hardwired connection, but this saves a considerable amount of space on the bottom of the case, as it doesn't need a "chin" to incorporate the connector. Subsequently, you won't have any additional stress on the micro-USB port when it comes to the case moving around on the phone. It also leaves the bottom of the phone exposed so you can access its headphone jack and speaker.

The Samsung battery case will bring an additional 2700 mAh of battery capacity to the Galaxy S7, or 3100 mAh for the S7 edge model, although of course not all of that will eventually make it into the phone over the course of charging. Expect this case to give your phone a solid 75 percent (or so) boost in battery life, depending on your usage. As is often the case with these accessories they may take some time to filter out to retailers, but this one should be relatively easy to get your hands on after the phone launches.