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Next-generation Qi2 wireless charging standard embraces Apple's MagSafe
- robomartin 4y agoHow finite of a resource is our magnet supply? Every time I see magnets used this question comes to mind. Sometimes it feels like they have become an unnecessary gimmick that is being abused by designers of all kinds of products. Anyone else have this reaction?
- asdff 4y agoExtend that to all the raw materials we squander for short lived consumer goods that we proceed to bury in landfills. In the future we will probably be mining these landfills after we've extracted all the accessible resources from the earth.
- Schroedingersat 4y agoIron nitride is effectively unlimited but manufacturing is difficult. Rare earths are more limited. Monazite isn't exceptionally rare, it's just mining it is quite awful.
- tomjen3 4y agoThat sucks. The point of wireless charging is zero friction, which means there should be nothing that stops me from putting the phone down on the bad, and nothing that fights against me when I pick it up. The magnet does that.
- rajnathani 4y agoAt least MagSafe is better for the environment (minus the magnetic e-waste), as regular wireless charging is highly inefficient from a wall-power to phone efficiency standpoint.
- post_break 4y agoI'm ok with this. It doesn't make it proprietary, expands on using magnets for alignment (something done in Android many many years ago), and mentions expanding charging speed. Hopefully soon we will see Android adoption of magnets for alignment.
- riley_dog 4y ago> expands on using magnets for alignment (something done in Android many many years ago) > Hopefully soon we will see Android adoption of magnets for alignment. So they did it, but stopped?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- post_break 4y agoYep. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zvgz3CfISr0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zvgz3CfISr0 2:55
- goosedragons 4y agoPalm Pre did it too. Was great and made wireless charging great. It's not as good with just a coil.
- stewarts 4y agoPalm did it ages ago with the Pre and Pixi. Worked quite well. I will say, the newer Magsafe stuff is much stronger at helping with alignment, my Belkin dock feels like it vacuums onto my phone when I connect it. I recall the Pre and Pixi often requiring a bit more manual intervention.
- post_break 4y agoIt also had nano suction cup on the bottom, you could stick it to just about anything. Love that stuff.
- smoldesu 4y agoThis is a great move for wireless charging as a whole, but I do have to question the fine-print here. Apple owns the MagSafe patents through 2030, which means they could pull a "MFi standard" situation and charge manufacturers licensing costs just to use "standard" technology. I'm still hopeful that this comes with no strings attached, but once bitten makes me twice shy.
- meragrin_ 4y agoWhat patents? I've only seen design patents. Alphabet has a patent on using magnets for alignment: US7026789B2
- post_break 4y agoReading the press release it appears the WCP is adopting the alignment via magnets as the standard. And Qi2 will remain the standard with no gotchas.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- scarface74 4y agoOnce you agree to make your patents part of a standard, the standard committee forces all patent holders to license their patents under FRAND.
- TylerE 4y agothe F stands for Fair, not Free.
- scarface74 4y agoI never said anything differently.
- smoldesu 4y agoYep. Historically though, Apple's standards have been less about creating convergent technology and more about reinforcing revenue streams. Look at the entire MFi line, a 'standard' that was defined by high-margin Chinese junk that slapped Apple icons on their Bluetooth smart speaker. There wasn't a Cambrian explosion of innovative iPhone tools, but instead a sea of useless iDogs and plastic boomboxes. Apple's greed has clearly hurt their own ecosystem in the past. They've made it completely obvious that their goal is indiscriminate rent collection, and I'd appreciate if that attitude would remain isolated from the ideals of open computing as a whole.
- GGO 4y agoCannot wait to see new devices pop up and make apple eco-system more diverse and less of a walled garden. Fingers crossed
- csdvrx 4y agoIf magnets are used to give the correct orientation, why not also have POGO pins or indentations next to the coil? Case 1) the device only supports wireless charging (say because it's waterproof): business as usual Case 2) the device also has conductive metal dots: the POGO pins can then charge the device much faster.
- user_7832 4y agoHonestly I am not sure why more devices don’t bother with pogo pins. It can provide close to the benefits of both wireless convenience, and wired efficiency together. My iPad and Amazfit watch are the only things I have that have pogo pins. (And yes they can get dirty etc but are also easy to clean. Not like USB ports don’t gunk up, or Qi doesn’t have issues either. Plus it’s very likely cheaper!)
- vlovich123 4y agoPOGO pins wouldn’t really impact waterproofing unless I’m missing something (similar to how you can have a USBC / lightning port on a waterproof phone). Is super the real reason is this would have limited value because: A) you have this already through cable charging B) it’s not clear it would meaningfully change the charging speed since you’d also need a communication standard (eg USB-PD) to negotiate the charge rate C) all of this is made moot by the fact that most people have a case on and don’t take their phone out of their case to put it on a Qi charger which negates the benefit. So basically cost and complexity for limited to no value. Of course maybe C is solvable by extending the pin through the case but I would think it would add cost to the case + maybe create some structural challenges negating the shock absorption.
- bonney_io 4y agoI love Qi, and I really love MagSafe, so I'm happy that magnetically-aligned-Qi is becoming the standard. Although, sadly, I suspect that Apple will continue to incorporate their own NFC identification into their Qi2 devices, and that alone will be what differentiates "MagSafe" from Qi2 -- almost certainly including limiting faster wireless charging to MagSafe.
- newaccount74 4y agoI tried to jump on the Qi bandwagon and got a bunch of Qi chargers, and various devices (iPhone, Airpods, Mouse) Unfortunately, the experience just sucks. Charging is slow, if you misalign it it doesn't charge (some devices have the coil off-center!), devices get hot while charging, chargers that work well for phones don't work for other devices... I'm disappointed and I've mostly gone back to charging with cables. I haven't tried any Magsafe stuff yet, but since it only works with iPhones it's a non-starter. I don't want a charger that charges just a single device. If Qi2 gets adopted it may be worth a try, but I think ultimately wireless charging is a gimmick that may be useful in special scenarios (eg. car mount), but for the most part I don't think it's a replacement for cables.
- hedgehog 4y agoI use Qi most of the time at my desks, cheap chargers from Anker and Ikea. Alignment by touch is second nature and easy with one hand (vs two to plug in a cable). It probably depends what your usage pattern is but I find it very convenient. I use a cable in my car because it's more reliable and less ambiguous whose phone should connect to the dash display.
- yborg 4y agoI can easily one-hand a Lightning cable in/out of an iPhone with my non-dominant hand if the phone is on a surface. It's actually the way I usually do it.
- rubatuga 4y agoYep, and the hotter your battery gets, the faster it's going to fail. Some estimates state that for every 15 degrees F over 77, battery life is cut in half. It's a lose lose situation :(
- turtlebits 4y agoNot a great concession, but FWIW, the MagSafe puck also charges the AirPods case. Same goes for the Apple Watch charger.
- guhidalg 4y ago
- rutierut 4y agoApple contributing to an open standard here must mean they've got ambitions to go portless with the iphones. With wireless-only charging, prevalence and compatibility is more important than exclusivity and using it as an USP which they usually seem to prefer.
- arsome 4y agoWireless only charging would be wasteful as it's rather inefficient (most tests show about 50% more energy put in to achieve the same charge) and this magnetic system is unlikely to work well for anyone who uses a case to achieve good coil alignment... I really hope the market doesn't go in this direction.
- threeseed 4y agoa) Wireless charging is a significantly better user experience. Every morning I quickly put my phone up against a magnetic dock, there is a click and it charges. I can also attach battery packs the same way. No cables. No hassles. b) MagSafe cases exist which are also magnetic and so there is no issue with coil alignment.
- fomine3 4y agoa) It's okay that you can use it, but please don't remove port. It's bad for me.
- asdff 4y agoGoing portless would be so bad in terms of ewaste. I still use wired headphones. I'm not about to bend the knee and buy some junky bluetooth cans that have degraded batteries in a year. My Sony MDRV6's have held up for 10 years now and still look and sound new, no reason to throw them away just because apple designers want to make a phone without the ability to connect a cable to it.
- brookst 4y agoBluetooth to 1/8” adapters are a thing.
- chromakode 4y agoThis is potentially fantastic news, if only to have a universal magnetic mounting standard across mobile devices. The past few years have seen an explosion of cool applications of magsafe: - Corridor Digital made a multi-phone mounting rig for recording multi-focal-length slow-mo. Lots of interesting maker possibilities. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8X16Gw3Qa4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8X16Gw3Qa4 - Peak Design has a line of mounts which combine magsafe and a physical locking mechanism for sports https://www.peakdesign.com/collections/mobile https://www.peakdesign.com/collections/mobile - Continuity Camera mounts (for using your phone as a webcam) is a hacky but brilliant example of where a temporary magnetic mount is extremely useful As an Android user, this ecosystem was opened up by a Peak Design case (which is compatible), but I hope to someday have a phone with built-in magnets, too. But it's not useful unless the magnets are compatible everywhere! Science fiction writers have envisioned this for decades. I look forward to the future of finally being able to stick my phone to more things!
- bergie 4y agoEarlier Google devices had magnets for Qi charging alignment. I think in the Nexus 4/Nexus 7 era. I had a Google Qi charger with strong enough magnets to hang the device on the wall. And then in typical Google fashion, the concept was dropped in a year or two. Happy that Apple (and now the Qi consortium) picked it up.
- moogly 4y agoYes, Nexus 4 + the official charger had that.
- 29083011397778 4y agoSo did the Nexus 5 - the magnets even aligned with Magsafe QI chargers!
- Eric_WVGG 4y agoThe one thing that’s been bugging me, and this updated standard fails to address, is that many devices that would benefit from wireless charging are too small for Qi and MagSafe (ex. bicycle lights, toothbrushes and grooming products, etc.) A mini-Qi based on the Apple Watch charger, or a smaller ring of magnets inside with a compatible charging coil, would have been really outstanding… I feel like this standard is just another thing that will have to be revised in 3-5 years.
- ryukafalz 4y agoOh this is exciting! What I really hope to see is a lapdock using this tech. I have a few lapdocks (basically laptop-shaped docks for your phone) and the most annoying thing about them is dealing with the short USB-C cable you need to plug your phone in. This would open the door to wireless charging from an arm that extends from the side; if you combine that with a wireless display standard (Miracast is the main non-Apple one these days though it's not well-supported) you could have a completely wireless lapdock that still charges your phone while you use it.
- ThePowerOfFuet 4y agoJust plug a cable in! You get Ethernet and real high-bandwidth video and high-current charging and audio and PCIe (Thunderbolt) and and and.
- samwillis 4y agoA number of years ago I worked with a colleague who had been one of the original electrical engineers at Splashpower [0] in the early 2000s. Splashpower was a Cambridge UK startup developing wireless inductive charging. Their aim was to create something similar to the multi device charging pad that Apple intended to launch but cancelled (the Splash Pad!), Apples was rumoured to be in development when I worked with them. He didn't think they would be able to achieve it (I think I remember him predicting high power draw and lots of heat, what is rumoured to have been the problem) From memory (this is about 8-10 years ago) Splashpower found that miss alignment of the coils massively impacted the performance and as a result struggled to make the multiple devices charger pad work. The magnetic alignment of Apples MagSafe system, or the chargers on the old Palm phones, should aid in making them significantly more efficient. Ultimately Splashpower went bust, the IP was brought by Fulton Innovation who, combing it with their own IP, then went on to create the Wireless Power Consortium [1] and the Qi charging standard. It's interesting how it's going full circle and Qi2 is now incorporating magnetic alignment. 0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splashpower https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splashpower 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECoupled#history https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECoupled#history
- TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago> predicting high power draw and lots of heat, what is rumoured to have been the problem) Or, if you're an induction cooktop manufacturer, a feature. I'm highly amused that we've gone from large / heavy coil based transformer AC adaptors, affectionately known as wall-warts, to highly efficient tiny switch-mode electronics, just to jam a poorly wound and poorly aligned coil pair back in the circuit. My phone has 15 watt Qi charging, how novel. I'll stick to cables.
- KRAKRISMOTT 4y agoI don't understand why Apple won't make a charging mat that charge directly through the electrical contacts on MagSafe instead of relying on the induction method.
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- bradgessler 4y agoDoes Apple get a royalty per Qi2 charging unit? I didn’t see that mentioned anywhere.
- meragrin_ 4y agoI can't imagine why. Alphabet has the patent on magnet alignment: US7026789B2.
- avalys 4y agoThat's great. Cars have been including integrated magnetic chargers for a few years now, and they're almost universally useless because it's impossible to get your phone properly aligned with them, and after a few bumps in the road they slide out of position anyway.