Google Pixel 5 has reverse wireless charging so how did they do that with an aluminum phone?
The new Pixel 5 smartphone Google smartphone was revealed this week. Of course, much had been let out of the bag, some of it by Google. But one of the last elements to be leaked was that it would have an aluminum, not glass, back.
All well and good but in that case, isn’t wireless charging off the menu? After all, every single phone that offers wireless charging has a glass or polycarbonate back to let the electrical charge through because, well, metal and electricity don’t really play well together for an object you’re holding in your hand. The Pixel 4 had wireless charging, but would this be left out of the 2020 flagship?
It turns out not. When Google revealed the Pixel 5 at its packed product launch the phone was described at offering not just wireless charging but reverse wireless charging as well, Battery Share as Google calls it, so you can recharge your Pixel Buds on the back of your Pixel 5.
Google Pixel 5 in Simply Sage finish.
How is Google performing this magical trick? The answer, as reported by Android Authority, is that although it’s true that the phone has an aluminum body, it’s not just aluminum.
In other words, as well as the aluminum, there’s another layer on top, which is bio-resin. That’s a thin but very robust layer of plastic which covers the phone.
That’s the first stage of the answer. Stage 2 is a hole cut in the back of the phone just where the wireless charging coil sits, allowing the charge to pass safely – in both directions – through the bio-resin. Google has said that the bio-resin, though very thin, is stiff enough that you won’t be able to feel the hole in the aluminum through it.
All very well, but doesn’t it seem a rather complicated way to build it? Why not use plastic or glass instead? Apparently, it’s because Google wanted a thin phone. It has put a sizeable battery, 4,080mAh, in the Pixel 5 but still wanted something that would be slim enough to look classily slender when up against the competition. Glass or pure polycarbonate, it seems, wouldn’t have been as slim, so this imaginative alternative was the solution they fastened on.
It’s certainly true that is should be less vulnerable to cracking and smashing than a phone made of glass front and back.
Google’s genius has been to find a completely unexpected way to make a highly popular feature like wireless charging possible in a body that would seem to preclude it.
Has Google hit on something here, and will we see imitators of this design in the future?
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