Wireless Charging Coming to the Next iPhone?

Peter_Brosdahl

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Wireless charging has been around for a number of years on a variety of phones. In the last couple we’ve even seen mice with charging pads. While the technology has not taken a dominant foothold it has crept into different arenas.

According to MacRumors a new ‘high end’ wireless charging iPhone will be getting released in 2021. This would seem to be a gain but it should be noted this would be facilitated by removing the phones only remaining port, the lightning port. This could make the iPhone the world’s first port-less phone. Abandoning cables altogether could be beneficial but it remains to be seen how it would affect file transfers.

Have you used wireless charging tech? Tell us your experiences in the forums.
 
I think a portless phone is not a bad idea per se... Of course the idea is to sell you exclusive magical wireless charging cables. Right now it's relatively big *** discs, that is not so great, but a cable with magnets and a small horizontal coil so that it would stick to the side something like that would be fine.... That being said... Flat external gold plated contacts would achieve all of it (speed, durability, simplicity), sans a exclusive coil design or whatever. Matter of fact, flat external contacts could be more versatile, as you could have more than power contacts then have a cable or bases or even cases that would give back the needed ports... It would be your choice in what to do.
Portless would be potentially more durable.
They could still make batteries replaceable of course.
Surely the other way to go it's to make ports easily replaceable to... But now I am just in dream Land.
 
The Lightning port as it stands right now is pretty much just contacts and it's IP68 compliant (submerged for 4M for 30 min) -- the only drawback to the port as-is is that it tends to fill with dust and lint. The port, in my opinion, hasn't been the major impediment to waterproofing -- now that the headphone jack is gone it's the speakers/mic.

WIth that said, hasn't been a lot of reason to ditch it - it's a nice thing to have, it would just give them a tiny bit more flexibility in layout, and given how many people haven't jumped on the wireless bandwagon, the backlash they would receive isn't worth the small bit of design flexibility you gain. Apple has had wireless updates and backups for a long time now, and wireless charging since iP8.

That, and the phone can charge considerably faster wired than wireless - so for people looking for quick fill-ups (like travelers in an airport, etc), it still makes sense to have the port available as there are still some popular use cases.
 
Oh wow. I haven't used an Apple device since my iPhone 4, years ago.

I didn't realize that they hadn't implemented the tech yet.

I mean, I find it rather useless myself, charging slowly, and sitting on a pad it might get knocked off of, but its surprising that they havent implemented it yet.
 
Zarathustra said:
Oh wow. I haven't used an Apple device since my iPhone 4, years ago.

I didn't realize that they hadn't implemented the tech yet.

I mean, I find it rather useless myself, charging slowly, and sitting on a pad it might get knocked off of, but its surprising that they havent implemented it yet.
Click to expand...
They have. Later than Andriod, but it's been on iPhones for over 2 years.

Just a bad, bad headline.
 
Brian_B said:
They have. Later than Andriod, but it's been on iPhones for over 2 years.

Just a bad, bad headline.
Click to expand...
Sorry about that. Just following the trail MacRumor started. I agree that the bigger issue is getting rid of their remaining jack/port.

On one hand kind of neat having a phone you don't need to plug into anything. On the other is the tech really up to the task. I'd say no at this point but really depends on the needs and want's of the user. Not worried about fast charging, fast file transfers, or hi-res audio, then not having ports/jacks isn't an issue. According to The Inquirer this will only happen on the top tier model and not the whole product line. Sound's like they're testing the waters.

edit: I will say that with their recent acquisition of modem tech it's possible they're working on filling the gaps of wireless solutions. The recent story I posted about Wisa could lead to hi-res audio and if using ax they could potentially increase transfer speeds. All that would be left would be improving charge times.
 
I will not want to carry a wireless charger around during travel.

That's just stupid. :rolleyes:
 
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