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The Next iPhone Will Have Wireless Charging, Says Apple Supplier (9to5mac.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the cat-is-out-of-the-bag dept.

Robert Hwang, CEO of a large iPhone manufacturing company in India, has let slip that the upcoming iPhone will have wireless charging. Hwang told reporters after the company's shareholder's meeting: "Assembly process for the previous generations of [iPhones] have not changed much, though new features like waterproof and wireless charging now require some different testing, and waterproof function will alter the assembly process a bit." 9to5Mac reports: Just this week, new glass panels purporting to be from the upcoming iPhones have given us another glimpse into the devices' designs. Showing off an iPhone 7s, 7s Plus, and iPhone 8, the images indicated that the glass back panels would open the door for wireless charging across all the devices. According to Hwang, Wistron's India facility is currently making "a small number" of handsets for Apple. He states the growth in manufacturing will hinge on relations between Apple and the Indian government.

10 of 124 comments (clear)

  1. fantastic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    wireless charging! Welcome to 2013! your improving apple, only a few years behind everyone else now.

    1. Re:fantastic by OhSoLaMeow · · Score: 4, Funny

      And they'll charge the phone using a 3.5mm jack!

      --
      They can take my LifeAlert pendant when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
    2. Re:fantastic by silverkniveshotmail. · · Score: 2

      your improving apple

      How is your/you're so difficult?

    3. Re:fantastic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      2013? The Palm Pre had wireless charging back in 2009. It was shit. Completely unreliable and prone to breaking.

      The value you get from Apple is not that they are the first to do things. It's that they usually wait until something can be done well and then they are the first to do things in such a way that the masses are happy. Apple weren't the first with a smartphone, or a mobile browser, or a tablet, or an online music store, or a fingerprint reader, or any number of other things. But they were the first to really do those things well.

      It's boring seeing people laugh about Apple not being first. They are hardly ever first. That's not the point.

    4. Re:fantastic by MrNiceguy_KS · · Score: 2

      2013? The Palm Pre had wireless charging back in 2009. It was shit. Completely unreliable and prone to breaking.

      Really? My experience was the exact opposite. Unlike the Qi standard used today, the Pre's system had magnets to snap the phone into the correct alignment, eliminating the biggest complaint about wireless charging on Android.

      --
      Redundancy is good And also good.
  2. Hwang, Bob Hwang. by rmdingler · · Score: 4, Funny

    The Next iPhone Will Have Wireless Charging, Says Apple Supplier

    Everyone here is dancing about like five-year-olds on Christmas morning.

    --
    Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

    Ernest Hemingway

  3. Power from a magnetic field by m2shariy · · Score: 2

    Shake the phone really quick next to a fridge magnet == free wireless charging from the magnetic field!

  4. Inverse Square Law Death Match by TheRealHocusLocus · · Score: 2

    I cannot wait for parasitic devices and ideas begin to feed off each other and off us, locked in a desperate struggle where tactics of escalation and power status notifications ---- not useful work --- becomes their primary function. Health monitors that damage health to charge and increase market share. Wearable devices that charge from human motion deliver shocks to cause motion, leaving a trail of sugar-depleted corpses. Wireless charged devices send "kill shots" to other devices to harness their chargers. WiFi parasites trigger encrypted porn downloads to maximize state-changes and harvest more energy. AT&T sends another circular trying to get us to switch to DirectTV. AT&T installs public megawatt Wifi outside your home to explode competitor's routers. Implantable devices that gather energy from tissue and decrease the nutrition of breast milk. speedtest.net consumes all traffic. Humans become minor players in symbiosis to ensure that Lithium-ion batteries reproduce. Cloud architecture virtualizes to the point of singularity when not a bit of actual hardware can be found. Interesting times.

    Also see: The Time Rift of 2100: How We lost the Future --- and Gained the Past.
    (rejected by WIRED Magazine!)

    --
    <blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
  5. Former Apple supplier by Snufu · · Score: 2

    Leak different.

  6. Re:But which standard? by uncle+slacky · · Score: 3, Informative

    It'll probably be Qi, they recently joined the Qi consortium so it's likely to be Qi, though they'll probably sell a charger that only responds to the iPhone "signature" (manufacturer ID) embedded in the Qi negotiation signals.

    --
    Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it.