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Apple Seeking Supplier for Wireless Charging Chips

Another reason not to buy iPhone 7 in 2016. What have Apple all employees been doing for a year? Expanding Apple stores? Changing 16GB to 32GB? Increasing geekbench score from 4400 to 5400? No innovation, no new macs, too many product lines, too complex product names. Welcome to 1996. Tim needs to go.

iPad, iPad 2, iPad 3, New iPad, iPad 4th Gen, iPad mini, iPad Air, iPad mini 2, iPad Air 2, iPad Pro, iPad mini 3, iPad mini 4... Do you remember all these fxx names? It should have been iPad 1, iPad 2, iPad 3, iPad 4, iPad 5, iPad 6, iPad 7, iPad 8...
 
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gsmornot said:
Could this work both ways? Could the phone receive power when near one of these chargers as well as send power to a device like the Apple Watch? If the watch could charge this way, as long as you keep your phone topped off you would never have to remove and charge your watch again. The watch and phone would WattUp at the coffee shop and the watch would WattUp when away from a standard charger.
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Why would the iPhone need to send power to the watch, when the watch could just charge wirelessly just the same? The current Apple Watch battery easily lasts a day, so charging wirelessly on your arm while you sleep (let alone whenever you're in your home, office, car, a cafe, etc.) should be plenty for you to never have to worry about it.
 
Mac 128 said:
In not the next phone 2018 will definitely see the Lightning port go away entirely. No opening on the phone whatsoever.

I'd rather have a year without the 3.5mm jack to work out the audio thing before they try to sort out this.

But there's the road map folks!
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I just said the same but I was joking... are you suggesting that whenever I'm travelling abroad or just out and about, instead of just packing/carrying my Lightning cable I'm going to need to take a complete wireless charging pad? I guess that's what Apple Watch owners have to do though so I wouldn't put it past Apple's "live your life according to how we think you should" design mantra.
 
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really don't care about wireless charging. We need phones that can last at least three days with heavy Pokemon Go use.
 
Wireless charging in my Car would be the largest advancement by far to me. I spend at least 30% of my day in my car.
 
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Energous’ system is called WattUp, and it works using a mix of RF, Bluetooth and a lot of patent-pending technology. The transmitter is where most of the magic happens. It communicates with and locates compatible devices using low-energy Bluetooth. Once they’ve established contact with a device, they send out focused RF signals on the same bands as WiFi that are then absorbed and converted into DC power by a tiny chip embedded in the device. These transmitters can be built into household appliances, TVs, speakers and standalone “energy routers.”

That means that the environment around these types of wireless chargers is literally filled with free flowing power— much more than standard WiFi or cordless phones would create. Indeed, one article about wireless charging tech from CES had an unusually honest quote from an anonymous executive of a major hardware company:

“I don’t think I would want to be in a room with free moving power signals,” an executive with a leading hardware technology company said on the condition of anonymity.

We are increasingly surrounded by radiation from wireless devices everywhere we go, and at every moment in our lives. That’s a trend that keeps on continuing, and has already led many (including the World Health Organization) to issue warnings about the risks to human health.

The shift to wireless power, however, represents an order-of-magnitude leap in the amount of EMF radiation that inundates our bodies.

http://www.shieldyourbody.com/2015/01/unknown-risks-wireless-charging/
 
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realeric said:
Another reason not to buy iPhone 7 in 2016. What have Apple all employees been doing for a year? Expanding Apple stores? Changing 16GB to 32GB? Increasing geekbench score from 4400 to 5400? No innovation, no new macs, too many product lines, too complex product names. Welcome to 1996. Tim needs to go.
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Working on a revolutionary phone to release in 2017 that simply wasn't possible on the 2 year cycle, which is going to position Apple as the leader in smartphones again, by a wide margin?

You know these things don't happen overnight. Great products take research, development, time, resources, manpower, etc. This was a planned execution. The tradeoff is 2 years without a redesign for a much better product in the long run in 2017.
 
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12376681_1063072477089016_3145722177588178860_n.nocrop.w536.h2147483647.2x.jpg


I'm sorry, but I couldn't resist after hearing that guy in the video...
 
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NightFox said:
I just said the same but I was joking... are you suggesting that whenever I'm travelling abroad or just out and about, instead of just packing/carrying my Lightning cable I'm going to need to take a complete wireless charging pad? I guess that's what Apple Watch owners have to do though so I wouldn't put it past Apple's "live your life according to how we think you should" design mantra.
Click to expand...

This wouldn't require a wireless charging pad. It would require the same charging cube you currently carry with you, which would radiate the power field within a limited area. You won't need a cable at all. And this one charging block will charge all of your wireless devices within range without cables, whether you remember to plug them in or not.

So you'll basically be eliminating things you'll need to carry.

The potential early problem will be finding a wireless charging station, or magnetic inductive charging puck (like the watch) when you're out without yours. But given how revolutionary this technology would be for Apple, I can't imagine this wouldn't catch on quickly. Faster than USB-C seems to be ...
 
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Yeah, this is huge. If Apple can figure out a way to do wireless charging at longer ranges, the implications are great. I'd never have to take the phone out of my pocket, never have to take my watch off of my wrist... Never have to worry about battery. And that's the kind of life-altering stuff Apple needs to innovate about.
 
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NightFox said:
I just said the same but I was joking... are you suggesting that whenever I'm travelling abroad or just out and about, instead of just packing/carrying my Lightning cable I'm going to need to take a complete wireless charging pad? I guess that's what Apple Watch owners have to do though so I wouldn't put it past Apple's "live your life according to how we think you should" design mantra.
Click to expand...

By the time Apple implements it, I assume it will be built into the AC power plug and transmit power to nearby devices. I highly doubt Apple's implementation will require a pad. Like with many things, Apple will wait until it can properly implement this feature.
 
Wireless charging would be icing on the cake. First just offer great wired fast charging. Its embarrassing that Apple hasn't offered this in a phone yet. If they're not going to make the battery bigger and instead continue on the crazy thinness craze Apple should at least make charging as robust and fast as possible.
 
AppleFan91 said:
Darn, so that more or less confirms that there won't be any wireless charging option this year. I guess if they can make it truly wireless then it's for sure worth another year wait. Just please bring fast charging
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Fast charging won't really matter if your phone is constantly charging while in your pocket/in use. As long as you are within range of a charger in your house, your car, at work, etc, you get a 100% full battery. That would definitely be revolutionary.

You won't even need to take off your Apple Watch while you sleep (i.e. sleep tracking done right).
 
ILuvEggplant said:
I find it rediculous that we are looking at the 2017 iPhone as the real upgrade from the 2014 iphone.
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I agree. It's like Apple is trying to drive away people from buying the iPhone 7. At this point after all the news reporting that so much new tech is coming to later iPhones, im seeing no reason not to wait until next year as opposed to spending a lot of money on the iPhone 7 with the same old same old with a faster chip and updated camera.
 
Create solar array to invest in renewable power, make wireless charging ubiquitous to waste insane amounts of power. The future is complicated. But it looks awesome.
 
Hm, I'm not terribly excited about long range wireless charging, health wise.
The standard iPhone charger is 5W. The allowed output of a wifi base station is 200mW tops, mostly 100mW.
Max output of a mobile phone is around 1W, and at that point, researchers are arguing wether that is dangerous in the long run, or not, when held close to the body.
So, to actually be able to charge a battery and not just stop it from draining one would probably need to receive 1W at least.
Considering that, the "focused RF beam" would need to be scary strong to actually produce 1W when absorbed by the phone.
 
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This would be slick, if as everyone says, it's done right. The wireless charging via pads is ok, but this would be great, especially for the Watch.
 
now i see it said:
Energous’ system is called WattUp, and it works using a mix of RF, Bluetooth and a lot of patent-pending technology. The transmitter is where most of the magic happens. It communicates with and locates compatible devices using low-energy Bluetooth. Once they’ve established contact with a device, they send out focused RF signals on the same bands as WiFi that are then absorbed and converted into DC power by a tiny chip embedded in the device. These transmitters can be built into household appliances, TVs, speakers and standalone “energy routers.”

That means that the environment around these types of wireless chargers is literally filled with free flowing power— much more than standard WiFi or cordless phones would create. Indeed, one article about wireless charging tech from CES had an unusually honest quote from an anonymous executive of a major hardware company:

“I don’t think I would want to be in a room with free moving power signals,” an executive with a leading hardware technology company said on the condition of anonymity.

We are increasingly surrounded by radiation from wireless devices everywhere we go, and at every moment in our lives. That’s a trend that keeps on continuing, and has already led many (including the World Health Organization) to issue warnings about the risks to human health.

The shift to wireless power, however, represents an order-of-magnitude leap in the amount of EMF radiation that inundates our bodies.

http://www.shieldyourbody.com/2015/01/unknown-risks-wireless-charging/
Click to expand...
It all really depends if it is ionizing or not. Since it is not the amount become less important. Now if the energy has a distribution and somewhere on that distribution it becomes ionizing and we increase the volume of energy dramatically the %ionizing will increase also but that tends not to be the case.
 
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