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What Finally Killed AirPower

ifixit.org

61–70 of 280 posts

Re: What Finally Killed AirPower

#61
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can slap my phone down on the charger next to my bed in the dark. I can grab my phone off the charger on my desk at work with one hand. Before wireless charging, it wasn't much hassle, and I only rarely had trouble with my phone battery dying. Now it's almost no hassle, and I never have trouble with my battery dying. It's just a nice quality-of-life boost.

Is that not something many people can do one-handed? The last time I had any trouble doing that one-handed was in the era of proprietary inch-wide charge connectors.

Last I checked, I only had one opposable thumb per hand. I need that to hold my phone, so how would I grab the cable? With my teeth?

Re: What Finally Killed AirPower

#62

So my phone is charged by a cable. It plugs into the wall on one side and then plugs into my phone on the other. This system works great - I plug my phone in when I go to bed and unplug it when I wake up. The cable is long enough to plug into my phone even if I want to use it in bed. It's easy, cheap and failproof. What is the draw of wireless charging? What is it that I'm missing? Did anyone ask for this?

In the present/short term, having a few spots in your home and office you can slap down whatever it is (phone+battery case, headphones, watch) whenever you don’t actively need to use it and just quickly pick them up when you need them. Even a few minutes charge can be handy.

In the medium term, the fact that it is portless and at this point, standardized, are features. Even a modicum of wear and tear can eat through ports (in both the phone and the power brick, but usually the phone) and cables (which is the common failure case if you travel with cables because you otherwise wouldn’t have one every place you need them). Anything that eliminates even a bit of wear and tear necessitating fewer repairs and replacements is a plus. Well the caveat here is I don’t know the failure states of Qi wireless charging pads yet, so there is possibly something I haven’t considered here.

In the long term: I would like a desk, where recessed into this desk is a a pad where I can place my phone, desktop, laptops on top of and have both power and a high speed LAN confined to that desk without the access point in the other room acting as the medium of exchange, and without having to plug every powered device individually into an outlet or cable to charge. This would massively cut down on RF interference, reduce the total number of cables I need to be concerned about, and make keeping the area around my desk clean a bit easier. I manage now, and it is fine, but I really dislike having to replace any cables in my current setup with another cable unless I’m reducing the number of cables, and I strongly dislike having to add to the number of cables in any space I maintain.

Might be a dream, but it is my dream. If all I cared about was keeping my phone charged, proximity charging wouldn’t be a selling point. When I factor in all the other infrastructure in my life I have to keep powered and charged and cabled, it is a much stronger sell.

Re: What Finally Killed AirPower

#63
post #5

> The FCC rules for wireless charging devices like AirPower are quite strict, and limit exposure to 20 cm (8 in) above the device to 50 mW/cm^2. I'm surprised they waited till the end to do the testing. When I used to work on hardware products at smaller companies, some preliminary tests are done on early designs to make sure we have a comfortable margin. A company like Apple should have dedicated in-house facilities…

I'm quite sure they didn't "wait until the end" to do the testing. First, this article is iFixit's speculation. Second, they probably did something similar to what iFixit envisioned: they did test early and knew it didn't pass muster, but thought they could eventually engineer themselves a fix, until they finally just hit a brick wall (aka physics) and found it wasn't an issue they could overcome.

A good engineer hits the "physics limit" brick wall pretty early in the design process...

I would think it more likely that they thought they could change FCC regulation via lobbying efforts in time for release.

Re: What Finally Killed AirPower

#64
post #4

What a shame, this would be the actual experience of wireless charging that I had envisioned it was. The reality of wireless charging is quite different: fiddly and possible to have your phone be dead in the morning. I wish someone could figure out how to make a true wireless charging mat like this. As it stands, I wouldn’t buy a wireless charger for my wife for example. She’ll just plonk it on there and then ask me…

Both Qi chargers that I have make it very clear if charging is happening. The "just plonk it down" problem is human, not technical. I'm sure you're most likely underestimating your wife's ability to learn what is, in reality, a quite simple task.

My problem is it's really easy to get just barely on the edge of the charge zone, and then at some point in the night you bump it ever so slightly and it leaves the zone and stops charging.

Re: What Finally Killed AirPower

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the real point is the eventual removal of the port altogether. If you can sync your phone over Wifi, stream to audio over Bluetooth, and reliably and quickly charge wirelessly, then you can remove the port altogether allowing for thinner, more robust, more water resistant designs. It's probably also cheaper to boot. That's the wireless future that I imagine Apple was/maybe still is imagining.

That would require sync over WiFi to actually work. Reliably.

They're just going to remove local syncing and stick with cloud based solutions.

Re: What Finally Killed AirPower

#67

So my phone is charged by a cable. It plugs into the wall on one side and then plugs into my phone on the other. This system works great - I plug my phone in when I go to bed and unplug it when I wake up. The cable is long enough to plug into my phone even if I want to use it in bed. It's easy, cheap and failproof. What is the draw of wireless charging? What is it that I'm missing? Did anyone ask for this?

I thought it would be a nice improvement, just laying my phone down in a few common places I charged it, so I bought a charging pad to try it out. Physics got in the way, even with a simple "high speed" charger from Samsung, with a Samsung phone. It was the case on the phone. Probably no more than 2mm thick, but it made finding the right position to charge very difficult. If it wasn't just right, it wouldn't charge, and even when it did it was much slower than the normal high speed charging.

I think there's potential in this arena, but it's not quite there yet, not for a lot of people and every day situations.

Re: What Finally Killed AirPower

#68
meantime i bought in December a pair of phone charging pads at Costco for $35 and still feel like it is the best thing since sliced bread :) Works like a charm for both our phones - wife's iPhone in the case and my S9. If only all these wireless earbuds that we also have to charge had the wireless charging antenna inside - the life would be grand. It is very strange that Apple couldn't pull it off.

Re: What Finally Killed AirPower

#69

So my phone is charged by a cable. It plugs into the wall on one side and then plugs into my phone on the other. This system works great - I plug my phone in when I go to bed and unplug it when I wake up. The cable is long enough to plug into my phone even if I want to use it in bed. It's easy, cheap and failproof. What is the draw of wireless charging? What is it that I'm missing? Did anyone ask for this?

The seconds it takes to plugging in and unplugging your phone add up and it takes mental effort. I’d rather just set the phone down on the nightstand or on the desk while drinking coffee and have it charge without whipping out the cable each time.

Re: What Finally Killed AirPower

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm quite sure they didn't "wait until the end" to do the testing. First, this article is iFixit's speculation. Second, they probably did something similar to what iFixit envisioned: they did test early and knew it didn't pass muster, but thought they could eventually engineer themselves a fix, until they finally just hit a brick wall (aka physics) and found it wasn't an issue they could overcome.

A good engineer hits the "physics limit" brick wall pretty early in the design process... I would think it more likely that they thought they could change FCC regulation via lobbying efforts in time for release.

Lobbying > engineering.
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