AirPower canceled by Apple, didn’t meet standards
In September 2017, Apple had an event where they unveiled iPhone 8, iPhone 8+ and iPhone X. Alongside these phones, Apple also announced that they would soon unveil AirPower, a wireless charging pad that would be able to charge up an iPhone, an Apple Watch and AirPods headphones at the same time. Almost two years later now, Apple has officially canceled the project.
Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Engineering, Dan Riccio, has said in a statement that the product simply couldn’t meet Apple’s standards. Presumably, Apple has run into problems with the placement of coils within the charging pad. In order to charge multiple devices at the same time, the pad needed to have multiple overlapping coils. Due to this design, both the charging pad the products charged heated up too much.
“After much effort, we’ve concluded AirPower will not achieve our high standards and we have cancelled the project. We apologize to those customers who were looking forward to this launch. We continue to believe that the future is wireless and are committed to push the wireless experience forward.”-Dan Riccio, senior vice president of Hardware Engineering, Apple
All Apple iPhones since the iPhone 8 are capable of wireless charging, and they are compatible with any Qi charging adapter. However, since the story with the AirPower is over, at least for now, we can expect another Apple product to come to the market. We doubt that Apple will let third-party manufacturers take advantage of their products without them offering a solution as well. Still, the next charger Apple offers will probably be much less ambitious.