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Photos Depict Alleged Internals of Canceled AirPower
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For real.. People should be talking about this on an Apple news site or forum, not on MacRu.... oh wait.
This sounds like the most plausible reason for the product being cancelled to me.
Well, Anything Apple is expensive. ~$299-$349 was the projected price point for this product.
I agree. Looks fake. The images only show standard Qi charging coils. Airpower would have had to have standard Qi charging coils and the proprietary Apple Watch charging coils overlapping. It was rumored that the overheating was a byproduct of standard and proprietary coils not playing nice together.
Multiple overlapping coils is a solved issued... if we're only talking about one standard of charging. Zen has the Liberty. The Liberty doesn't charge the AW on the same pad. It uses a separate attachment.
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That looks like something that cost $800 and comes few different colors.
Just look at that logic board? Whilst its convenience would have been nice, it's lame that Apple went so overboard on a...charging mat. Talk about reinventing the wheel.
And... a product that is already pretty much commoditized.
Apple bailing on this was a smart decision.
One thing that has always bugged me is did this connect over USB C or lightning. I know its a non issue nowadays but i could never tell from any press or photos.
UPDATE: never mind i saw on 9to5 that its lightning based. Finally ends two years of questioning.
UPDATE: never mind i saw on 9to5 that its lightning based. Finally ends two years of questioning.
Wait......But..... according to the members on this site (And this thread) , because Apple didn’t release the AirPower, they failed at matching the competition. But.... if they had released the Airpower and it experienced ‘technical issues‘, then Apple failed at releasing a ‘successful product‘. So you know...Apple can’t win either way. But everybody on here is an arm-chair CEO and an engineer that knows what’s best for Apple.
You don't necessarily need a separate Apple Watch coil. It can be triggered by a standard Qi coil.
Given the video shows AirPower with 22 coils, it's likely Apple can engineer the software and hardware to charge Watch using Qi.
The watch charger worked fine charging our custom device....I think the watch itself is boogered to refuse 3rd party chargers.
Maybe they cancelled it because it wasn't overheating quite enough...?!
I would love to know what stage of development AirPower was in when they announced it, it’s still surprises they would announce something that hasn’t yet proved practical to manufacture.
To be honest... be the info real or not - that kind of form factor and internals don’t have the right philosophy of minimalism and function that should be at the base of an apple product. This thing would take so much space with so much complexity, just to be able to place a device 5 cm further away than possibly otherwise. Would one need that freedom and at the same time the constraints of a large device? I’d have bet my cards on perhaps a coil / multiple cools that move towards the optimal position for the device to charge. But hey... who am I and how realistic would that be? Compared to this chaos it might be worth a shot tho..
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I have seen the anecdotal evidence that the AW can charge on standard Qi chargers, but...
Regardless, the unit in this article looks suspect at best, imo.
all of that evidence has shown an inconsistency in the charging functionality. Sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. Never for longer than a few seconds. None of the evidence shows consistently reliable charging. Most of what I have seen has shown the AW without bands sometimes being charged, and never with another device like a phone. Without being able to consistently charge the AW on a standard Qi charger, I think it's kind of inaccurate to say it works with standard Qi.
Early on in the history of the AW it was rumored that Apple forked version 1.1.2 of the Qi standard to make the watch's charging proprietary. Not sure what they did in later iterations.
Regardless, the unit in this article looks suspect at best, imo.
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Have you looked at actual reviews of that thing? I went from, "Hmm, going to buy that" to "nope".
Maybe it was exploding like the Note 7. The difference is Samsung actually thought it was a good idea to release a phone bomb.
Reviews of the Zen Liberty are immaterial to the overall point I was making. The item featured in this article seems fake. Looks like something you can find on Alibaba. Liberty reviews, good or bad, won't change that.
Remember all those people yelling that it was clearly way overpriced because they had a $25 Qi charger?
All those chargers with inconsistent performance is expected given the closed nature of the Apple Watch charging design. The fact that a Qi charger can trigger a Watch in certain positions suggests there is a way to solve the problem.
Until today, we have not seen a charging pad with 22 coils. Even the Zens Liberty only has 16 and costs nearly $200. Other than Apple, how many companies have the resources to design a $200-$300 charging pad and bet on commercial success?
The teardown video shows a soldering iron wasn't good enough to disassemble the charging mat. It was dissipating heat too quickly. A heat gun had to be used in conjunction with a hotplate. The quality of this pad is not something you'll find on Alibaba.