If they just made it a little bigger they could have just combined three mats into one unit and have them operate independently. They already have similar combo units on the market. They just went too fancy.
Their entire design for the product was based on the idea that it would be different than existing mats on the market that include 2-3 coils and require that you place the device accurately. Apple’s patent for their work showed 15 coils inside the mat, nothing similar is on the market.
This, repeated multiple times and yet no news wanted to report it, and no reader wanted to know why, and every comment has been repeating the same question again and again.
You're right, nothing similar IS on the market, including this... because it didn't work. The article discusses some of the problems, which they couldn't work out despite the time and resources thrown at it.
The problem is their choice to use induction, they could have gone with RF, avoid lots of complications and constraints while pushing for at a distance contactless charging longer term.
Probably because even at a distance of just one foot, current regulations limit power delivery to around 120mW. This makes induction a pretty easy choice.
You are missing the point, they would not have orientation and placement issues, no large coils, they could even put the receiver into the earbud , more hardware integration (radio), easier to charge multiple device. At a distance would be longer term The first gen AirPods for example have a 93mWh battery each and they can play music for 5h, not a lot of energy required. Induction is limited and provides minimal upside to the user, RF would be forward looking, a better investment. The future is not phones, it's glasses and IoT and other devices that are very efficient with mechanical volume a huge constraint and RF power delivery/energy harvesting would be a core asset. Even longer term, same radio capable of data and power simultaneously and you might have one radio in each package and no pins, at all. Wireless interconnect, wireless power and you are done.
The physics, you say? OK so let's LOOK at the physics. Point #1: when does the inverse square law kick in? In the FAR field. And the far field is what? Well, it's a few wavelengths out from the radiator. Near the radiator (VERY near) what counts is the reactive field which follows very different laws.
Point #2: OK, so what IS the relevant wave length? Well Qi operates up to around 300kHz, so 3*10^5Hz. So the wavelength will be 3*10^8/3*10^5=1km! If you're trying to charge using Qi 1km (or even 1m) from the charger, well, sorry, but you're doing it wrong...
It's good to be interested in physics. It's good to know that physics puts constraints on what can and can't be done. It's not quite so good to fancy that you're an expert in physics when you're not, and to imagine that physics is something like politics where reality can be matched to your personal opinions about which companies you do and don't like.
You rambled on there but didn’t address any of the concerns with using higher frequencies. Transmitters-Inefficient, Transfer-Inefficient, Receiver-Inefficient. There are allowable power density and interference issues. Even for small devices it seems impractical.
IoT devices won't be replacing phones anytime soon. Even at point blank range RF charging is simply far too weak for any device larger than an earbud.
Hardware development has never been something Apple is any good at. Someone else will implement an inductive solution that works and Apple will buy them out.
You may have a variety of complaints about wireless charging, but it is a fact that TODAY it works for things "larger than an earbud". To take just one example, you can buy cars today that charge iPhones by simply placing them on a charging mat situated near the driver's seat. If you don't want to buy a whole car, you can such a charger as an after-market add-on: https://mashtips.com/best-wireless-car-chargers-ip...
What does that have to do with RF charging? That's induction tech. Also, I'm pretty sure that PowerByProxi is where they got the talent pool that worked on the failed airpower. Which was also inductive, but too ambitious for them.
I have no complaints about wireless charging in general, just RF charging specifically. Electricity is both created inductively and then passes through a series of inductive stages before ever reaching a power outlet. Inductive tech is a natural fit for wireless power delivery.
I don't think it's as simple as "The design team TOLD the management that it can't be done and the management refused to believe it." My guess is that it actually works, not just as a lab demo but even as something manufacturable BUT there are durability issues: Something like if you bend the mat, or drop it, it breaks too easily. (Or even worse, doesn't obviously break, but starts performing erratically or dangerously.)
To my mind, nothing else explains the pattern here --- announcing it, then keeping going for so long. It must have looked like "we HAVE this working! Surely we can figure out these stupid every day issues with just a little more effort?" I'm sure failure earlier in the pipeline (we can't even get it to work, or it's impossible to manufacture at a reasonable price) would have been caught much earlier.
Likely it's heat issues stemming from interference between all those coils. Someone at engineering likely thought they would be able to figure it out. Maybe the owners of PoweredbyProxi told apple management that they could build something along the lines of the airpower mat to warrant the purchase of their company back in 2017 for a cool $100+ million. Who knows.
Uhh, but it's honestly very simple to solve... If you can make 3 small charging pads, you can make 1 big one, there is literally no difference so long as the heat doesn't transfer across the different pads. Overheating = just use different materials and design, and variable charging rate depending on temperature.
I don't know if there's a standard for reading the current state of charge, but it could EASILY be done over BT, NFC, or iCloud. All you'd need is a little SoC in the pad itself.
Seems like they're not ready to release it yet, but it's FAR from impossible.
Apple wasn’t using three distinct zones. They wanted the user to be able to place peripherals anywhere on the pad and not care about orientation, hence the 15+ coils. That is a much harder problem to solve than three coils with adequate spacing.
Prety much the only thing that I considered as a way to move my family towards less wire. Now I am stuck with having an extra cable for AWatch everwhere.
Honestly having 3 iPhones charge at 22,5 W, plus magnetic field leaking, plus converting all the current D/A and back. That is a lot of heat. Would need a huawei phone charger for sure.
Actually I think some of this IS Apple self-inflicted silliness. The aWatch charger TODAY should be capable of charging the Airpods case and even (albeit slowly) the iPhone. It's not. Apple should have built-that into the charger the day they decided they were interested in wireless charging going forward. It wouldn't have taught them anything useful for the AirPower mat, but it would have bought them some good-will, in the same way that people appreciate how you can charge most of your Apple stuff with a single lightning connector.
I don’t understand why Apple choose the standard Qi based on induction as the wireless power standard for their devices.
In terms of convenience, my understanding is that, at the time, there was another competing standard, Rezence (Airfuell) that is based on resonance wireless charging.
From what I read about it, it offered the possibility to charge multiple devices at the same time with a charger, and was much more flexible in terms of freedom of positionning.
However, it seems it was less power efficient but I would definitely have take it over Qi wireless charging for the added convenience !!!!
I wonder what the culture is like when a high profile project like this gets cancelled so late in the game. do they all run around playing the blame game? do people get axed? or does the company accept that not all ideas pan out and then redeploy their talented people on other projects?
i know when they were building the ring in Cupertino, they were absolutely merciless with their contractors.
Not enough courage to say: "You're putting it on the mat wrong."
They should have engineered a little apple mascot robot that goes and positions the device on the mat correctly for you. I mean if you are making a luxury charging mat you might as well go for the gold and make it cost $350.
Wireless Phone Chargers Market Analysis - http://bit.ly/2Z1SW9O This report focuses on Wireless Phone Chargers volume and value at global level, regional level and company level. From a global perspective, this report represents overall Wireless Phone Chargers market size by analyzing historical data and future prospect. Regionally, this report focuses on several key regions: North America, Europe, China and Japan. At company level, this report focuses on the production capacity, ex-factory price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer covered in this report.
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Alexvrb - Friday, March 29, 2019 - link
If they just made it a little bigger they could have just combined three mats into one unit and have them operate independently. They already have similar combo units on the market. They just went too fancy.Tegeril - Saturday, March 30, 2019 - link
Their entire design for the product was based on the idea that it would be different than existing mats on the market that include 2-3 coils and require that you place the device accurately. Apple’s patent for their work showed 15 coils inside the mat, nothing similar is on the market.ksec - Monday, April 1, 2019 - link
This, repeated multiple times and yet no news wanted to report it, and no reader wanted to know why, and every comment has been repeating the same question again and again.Alexvrb - Tuesday, April 2, 2019 - link
You're right, nothing similar IS on the market, including this... because it didn't work. The article discusses some of the problems, which they couldn't work out despite the time and resources thrown at it.jjj - Friday, March 29, 2019 - link
The problem is their choice to use induction, they could have gone with RF, avoid lots of complications and constraints while pushing for at a distance contactless charging longer term.tk11 - Friday, March 29, 2019 - link
Probably because even at a distance of just one foot, current regulations limit power delivery to around 120mW. This makes induction a pretty easy choice.jjj - Saturday, March 30, 2019 - link
You are missing the point, they would not have orientation and placement issues, no large coils, they could even put the receiver into the earbud , more hardware integration (radio), easier to charge multiple device. At a distance would be longer term The first gen AirPods for example have a 93mWh battery each and they can play music for 5h, not a lot of energy required.Induction is limited and provides minimal upside to the user, RF would be forward looking, a better investment.
The future is not phones, it's glasses and IoT and other devices that are very efficient with mechanical volume a huge constraint and RF power delivery/energy harvesting would be a core asset.
Even longer term, same radio capable of data and power simultaneously and you might have one radio in each package and no pins, at all. Wireless interconnect, wireless power and you are done.
supdawgwtfd - Saturday, March 30, 2019 - link
The physics show that RF power is a very bad idea ..Power levels drop off at an inverse square over distance.
You would be wasting an absolutely huge amount of energy.
It's not going to happen.
name99 - Monday, April 1, 2019 - link
The physics, you say?OK so let's LOOK at the physics.
Point #1: when does the inverse square law kick in? In the FAR field. And the far field is what? Well, it's a few wavelengths out from the radiator.
Near the radiator (VERY near) what counts is the reactive field which follows very different laws.
Point #2: OK, so what IS the relevant wave length?
Well Qi operates up to around 300kHz, so 3*10^5Hz. So the wavelength will be 3*10^8/3*10^5=1km!
If you're trying to charge using Qi 1km (or even 1m) from the charger, well, sorry, but you're doing it wrong...
It's good to be interested in physics.
It's good to know that physics puts constraints on what can and can't be done.
It's not quite so good to fancy that you're an expert in physics when you're not, and to imagine that physics is something like politics where reality can be matched to your personal opinions about which companies you do and don't like.
name99 - Monday, April 1, 2019 - link
Oops, forgot the link:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_and_far_field
flgt - Monday, April 1, 2019 - link
You rambled on there but didn’t address any of the concerns with using higher frequencies. Transmitters-Inefficient, Transfer-Inefficient, Receiver-Inefficient. There are allowable power density and interference issues. Even for small devices it seems impractical.tk11 - Sunday, March 31, 2019 - link
IoT devices won't be replacing phones anytime soon. Even at point blank range RF charging is simply far too weak for any device larger than an earbud.Hardware development has never been something Apple is any good at. Someone else will implement an inductive solution that works and Apple will buy them out.
name99 - Monday, April 1, 2019 - link
So physics expert is followed by M&A expert?Ever heard of PowerByProxi?
Look at:
https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/24/16539604/apple...
You may have a variety of complaints about wireless charging, but it is a fact that TODAY it works for things "larger than an earbud". To take just one example, you can buy cars today that charge iPhones by simply placing them on a charging mat situated near the driver's seat.
If you don't want to buy a whole car, you can such a charger as an after-market add-on:
https://mashtips.com/best-wireless-car-chargers-ip...
Alexvrb - Tuesday, April 2, 2019 - link
What does that have to do with RF charging? That's induction tech. Also, I'm pretty sure that PowerByProxi is where they got the talent pool that worked on the failed airpower. Which was also inductive, but too ambitious for them.tk11 - Tuesday, April 2, 2019 - link
I have no complaints about wireless charging in general, just RF charging specifically. Electricity is both created inductively and then passes through a series of inductive stages before ever reaching a power outlet. Inductive tech is a natural fit for wireless power delivery.web2dot0 - Saturday, March 30, 2019 - link
The problem is you think we can do better than what the Apple Engineers couldn't come up with. LOL.The design team TOLD the management that it can't be done and the management refused to believe it.
That's always been the motto. ;)
So enjoy your armchair quarterbacking.
name99 - Saturday, March 30, 2019 - link
I don't think it's as simple as "The design team TOLD the management that it can't be done and the management refused to believe it."My guess is that it actually works, not just as a lab demo but even as something manufacturable BUT there are durability issues: Something like if you bend the mat, or drop it, it breaks too easily.
(Or even worse, doesn't obviously break, but starts performing erratically or dangerously.)
To my mind, nothing else explains the pattern here --- announcing it, then keeping going for so long. It must have looked like "we HAVE this working! Surely we can figure out these stupid every day issues with just a little more effort?"
I'm sure failure earlier in the pipeline (we can't even get it to work, or it's impossible to manufacture at a reasonable price) would have been caught much earlier.
MarcusMo - Sunday, March 31, 2019 - link
Likely it's heat issues stemming from interference between all those coils. Someone at engineering likely thought they would be able to figure it out. Maybe the owners of PoweredbyProxi told apple management that they could build something along the lines of the airpower mat to warrant the purchase of their company back in 2017 for a cool $100+ million. Who knows.flyingpants265 - Sunday, March 31, 2019 - link
Uhh, but it's honestly very simple to solve... If you can make 3 small charging pads, you can make 1 big one, there is literally no difference so long as the heat doesn't transfer across the different pads. Overheating = just use different materials and design, and variable charging rate depending on temperature.I don't know if there's a standard for reading the current state of charge, but it could EASILY be done over BT, NFC, or iCloud. All you'd need is a little SoC in the pad itself.
Seems like they're not ready to release it yet, but it's FAR from impossible.
MarcusMo - Monday, April 1, 2019 - link
Apple wasn’t using three distinct zones. They wanted the user to be able to place peripherals anywhere on the pad and not care about orientation, hence the 15+ coils. That is a much harder problem to solve than three coils with adequate spacing.akrobet - Saturday, March 30, 2019 - link
They are just waiting for Huawei/Samsung/Xiaomi to figure it out, and then Apple will introduce it as their own revolutionary...Donkey2008 - Saturday, April 6, 2019 - link
Apple hasn't mastered how to make batteries explode so Samsung has that on them still.qlum - Saturday, March 30, 2019 - link
So basically they came to the conclution that what they wanted to make was simply not viable.GC2:CS - Saturday, March 30, 2019 - link
Noooo ! (Death star pops)Prety much the only thing that I considered as a way to move my family towards less wire.
Now I am stuck with having an extra cable for AWatch everwhere.
Honestly having 3 iPhones charge at 22,5 W, plus magnetic field leaking, plus converting all the current D/A and back. That is a lot of heat. Would need a huawei phone charger for sure.
name99 - Saturday, March 30, 2019 - link
Actually I think some of this IS Apple self-inflicted silliness.The aWatch charger TODAY should be capable of charging the Airpods case and even (albeit slowly) the iPhone. It's not.
Apple should have built-that into the charger the day they decided they were interested in wireless charging going forward. It wouldn't have taught them anything useful for the AirPower mat, but it would have bought them some good-will, in the same way that people appreciate how you can charge most of your Apple stuff with a single lightning connector.
Diogene7 - Saturday, March 30, 2019 - link
I don’t understand why Apple choose the standard Qi based on induction as the wireless power standard for their devices.In terms of convenience, my understanding is that, at the time, there was another competing standard, Rezence (Airfuell) that is based on resonance wireless charging.
From what I read about it, it offered the possibility to charge multiple devices at the same time with a charger, and was much more flexible in terms of freedom of positionning.
However, it seems it was less power efficient but I would definitely have take it over Qi wireless charging for the added convenience !!!!
HardwareDufus - Sunday, March 31, 2019 - link
I wonder what the culture is like when a high profile project like this gets cancelled so late in the game. do they all run around playing the blame game? do people get axed? or does the company accept that not all ideas pan out and then redeploy their talented people on other projects?i know when they were building the ring in Cupertino, they were absolutely merciless with their contractors.
Gunbuster - Monday, April 1, 2019 - link
Not enough courage to say: "You're putting it on the mat wrong."They should have engineered a little apple mascot robot that goes and positions the device on the mat correctly for you. I mean if you are making a luxury charging mat you might as well go for the gold and make it cost $350.
vaibhav24 - Thursday, April 11, 2019 - link
Wireless Phone Chargers Market Analysis - http://bit.ly/2Z1SW9OThis report focuses on Wireless Phone Chargers volume and value at global level, regional level and company level. From a global perspective, this report represents overall Wireless Phone Chargers market size by analyzing historical data and future prospect. Regionally, this report focuses on several key regions: North America, Europe, China and Japan.
At company level, this report focuses on the production capacity, ex-factory price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer covered in this report.