Apple Joins Wireless Power Consortium Amid Rumors of iPhone With Wireless Charging (theverge.com)

If you've been holding out hope for wireless charging to come to the iPhone, chew on this: Apple joined the Wireless Power Consortium. From a report: Last week, a leaked note suggested that Apple is working on adding wireless charging to three phones scheduled for release in 2017. The technology may be similar to what the company has already implemented with the Apple Watch, though other reports have hinted at charging solutions that can add power to devices from a distance. The Wireless Power Consortium is the group behind Qi, a wireless charging standard that uses inductive power transfers to charge without cords.

Comments

Fear not!

[kuzb]

Apple will introduce some proprietary protocol between the apple device and the extremely expensive charging pad to ensure that you can't use just any cost effective QI charger.

Square of the distance...

[bobbied]

Everybody needs to remember one critical fact here... Once you get a little distance away from the transmitter, the energy available will fall off according to a set formula based on simple geometry. That formula has the distance squared on the bottom of the fraction.

Why do I point this out? Because everybody needs to understand that "wireless" power distribution may be possible over short distances for small amounts of power, it quickly becomes impractical as the distance between the transmitter and receiver goes up because the available energy captured falls off in some ratio of the inverse of the distance squared. To put it another way, You will have to stay close to that charger, REALLY close or it's going to have to put out some seriously dangerous levels of power which will fry you if you get too close.

So, if wireless charging means you drop your phone on a pad or into some holder that then allows the coupling of a changing magnetic field and some coil of wire on the phone, you are getting what you expected. But if you think you can sit on your couch with the "charger" on some shelf across the room, or have the phone in your pocket changing while you drive down the road because the charger is built into the car, that's not going to happen.