Apple announced last week that it has canceled its AirPower charging mat over concerns related to its inability to achieve “high standards” for the product. Apple had first announced details about the AirPower charging mat during the company’s iPhone X event in September 2017.
During the event, Apple said that AirPower would be shipped in 2018, but failed to follow up for the next 18 months. The speculation over AirPower chargers getting canceled grew when Apple removed all info regarding AirPower from its website. However, the rumors of its cancellation went down as iOS 12.2 beta release included support for a wireless charger.
“After much effort, we’ve concluded AirPower will not achieve our high standards and we have canceled the project. We apologize to those customers who were looking forward to this launch”, Dan Riccio, SVP of Hardware Engineering, Apple, told TechCrunch.
Had the chargers shipped, a multitude of new and unique features would have welcomed the users. For instance, apart from being wireless, AirPower charger would have also been equipped with multi-device charging feature (ability to charge three devices at once), and a unique technology with multiple coils, among others.
Many people have made speculations about the reason behind AirPower cancellation, with many blaming it on issues related to engineering and overheating. Craig Lloyd, a staff writer at iFixit, published post where he discusses the possible reasons behind charger’s cancellation.
Craig states that Wireless charging pads use electric current in your phone’s wire coil that helps charge the battery. However, this electricity being transmitted isn’t perfectly clean and generates noise that can interfere with other wireless devices. When different coils are charged together, a slightly different waveform is generated. Apple wanted to create a large charging platform with the help of overlapping coils which would allow AirCharger to power different devices on the charger mat. However, this introduced a different set of challenges.
“Apple boxed themselves into an electromagnetic corner. What they wanted to do was physically possible—and they surely had it working in the lab—but they couldn’t consistently meet the rigorous transmission requirements that are designed to keep us safe from our gadgets”, states Craig.
Now although Apple failed to deliver this product, it has not lost hope yet. “We continue to believe that the future is wireless and are committed to push the wireless experience forward”, said Riccio.
Public reaction to the news is largely comical, as users took to Twitter to post memes regarding the news.
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