Magnets have a long history of messing with electronics. Smartphones are wildly complex machines, rich with sensors, lenses, screens, charging coils and ferrites, and a million other things that could seemingly be affected by a strong magnetic field.

All this is to say, our engineers are acutely aware of the risk of magnetic interference, and hence we took this risk very seriously during the development of our Mobile products. We put our products (and a wide range of smartphone models) through the proverbial ringer, both with specific engineering tests and broad real-world testing. 

What about interference with wireless charging?

In short, Peak Design wireless chargers are capable of charging your phone as quickly as the fastest, most efficient wireless chargers out there. Interference between the magnets in our products and your wireless charging performance is negligible, imperceptible, and/or offset by the fact that our products are designed to perfectly align your phone and charger, and also dissipate heat that can otherwise slow charging performance on more cheaply-built systems. For the full download on wireless charging, check out our Wireless Charging FAQ.

What about interference with my phone's camera?

Recently Apple published a support article suggesting that magnetic accessories may interfere with rear-facing cameras on some iPhones. We have experienced zero instances of this type of interference occurring.

By 'we,' we mean the tens of thousands of Peak Design mobile customers who have been using these products since they became available in January 2022, the 150+ beta testers who we monitored closely over our 8-month pre-production beta test, and the 40+ Peak Design employees who have been using prototypes, pre-production, or production Mobile products continuously since 2019.

If you do experience this type of interference, we suggest updating your phone to ensure you are on the latest iOS, Apple has resolved some issues via this software, and you may find resolutions simply by updating. If you're still having trouble, please contact our support team at info@peakdesign.com. We'll want to know the specific phone make/model, the specific PD products you're using, and the conditions under which you experienced the issue.

What about the Samsung S-Pen?

There is one important known instance of the magnets in our cases interfering with a phone accessory, and that is with the Samsung S-Pen stylus. When a Peak Design case is on your Samsung phone, you will not be able to use the S-Pen due to magnetic interference. The interference is not permanent though...you can remove your case any time and use the S-Pen. But this is obviously an inconvenience to Samsung users who prefer to use the S-Pen.

We've made a high-profile note of this on our Samsung Everyday Case product page. Note that we do offer a 30-day return policy, so if you purchase a Samsung Case and later find that it's incompatible with your S-Pen, you can return it for free.

What about credit cards and hotel room keys?

There are primarily two types of magnetic strips out in the world. One is low coercivity (Lo-Co) and the other is high Coercivity (Hi-Co). It’s just a fancy way of saying how easy it is to demagnetize. Lo-Co is a lot easier than Hi-Co to demagnetize. 

Lo-Co cards are often used at parking garages, hotels, and other similar places. This stripe will often have a dark brown or dark grey color.

Hi-Co cards are often used for credit cards, debit cards, and some ID cards. That stripe will have a dark black color.

Having done in-house testing, we believe your credit cards should be unaffected by magnetic interference. The results for Lo-Co cards, like hotel room keys, for example, have much more mixed results. We've observed that hotels with newer key systems are less likely to be demagnetized than hotels with older systems, but those results are mostly anecdotal. In any case, we recommend not keeping your hotel key in the same pocket as your phone to save yourself the risk of a 2 am front desk trip.

The magnetic strip in hotel room keys is designed to be written and rewritten over and over again, and hence it's much more easily demagnetized than a credit card. 

What about NFC interference? 

NFC stands for Near-field communication. When you hear “contactless payment” or the likes of “Apple Pay” and “Samsung Pay,” they are all using NFC.

Like a lot of other technology, NFC’s signal is affected by magnets. Through our extensive testing with the Everyday Case, we have found that it will not cause NFC issues in most cases. We can also confirm that there will be no lasting damage to your device.

The most common cause of NFC issues is actually the reader. Some readers are more sensitive than others. Our recommendation is to remove the case when you are dealing with a sensitive reader.

What about my phone's navigation compass?

Nearly every smartphone on the market uses a magnetometer sensor to determine cardinal directions. While these sensors are susceptible to being influenced by magnets, our testing found this impact to be minimal. As a result, we are confident that the daily usability benefits you experience with your case will strongly outweigh the minor compass errors our case could possibly introduce.

Interestingly, our magnetometer interference testing showed that many built-in phone compasses could be a bit unreliable, regardless of the phone case. Fortunately, modern GPS navigation systems do not rely on the built-in compass but instead on satellite communication, if you're planning on orienteering through the backcountry, do yourself a favor and get a good old-fashioned sighting compass.