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What Finally Killed AirPower

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Re: What Finally Killed AirPower

#261

Post by radiorental »

hmottestad wrote: post #148
7granddad wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don't follow is how other multi-charging mats do exactly this. According to the article, by their estimation it was powerful harmonic EM interference that did AirPower in. If AirPower were only powering 3 coils at a time like other multi-charging mats why did it run into this problem when others had not

I guess it is because no other mat has overlapping coils. In the apple one they wanted you to not care where you put down your devices. Since they have so many coils, it then becomes likely that the 3 active ones overlap.

There has to be something else going on here. It strikes me as relatively simple to have the device talk to the mat and optimise on which coil was providing the most current draw.

I suspect that engineering does have a design that meets regulations but they couldn't get the cost down. I.e. the extra circuitry in both the met and possibly the devices to precisely sense which coil(S) are providing optimal charging is cost prohibitive.

Re: What Finally Killed AirPower

#262

Post by jessewmc »

brian-armstrong wrote: post #11

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?

For me the win would be being able to charge my phone, watch, and airpods all at once. This is way, way better than 3 cables (one of which is different).

Re: What Finally Killed AirPower

#263

Post by rconti »

dingaling wrote: post #157
brian-armstrong wrote: post #11

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?

Tangent, but the general advice in the past re: Lithium batteries was never to charge them without surveillance due to fire risk. So for years I've been turning-off the chargers at bedtime. Has this advice changed?

No, but nobody pays any attention to it. Everybody leaves all their devices on chargers overnight; at home, in the office, etc.

Re: What Finally Killed AirPower

#264

Post by radiorental »

leoh wrote: post #83
pg_bot wrote: post #74

Could you put a pressure sensor on the pad and only power on the coils directly underneath the object? I assume with software you could selectively turn on/off areas of the mat to manage the heat problems that come with multiple coils being on at once. I could see it being a problem if they were charging all at the same time but you should be able to fake it and call that good enough. All the devices have to charge,…

Right. Or similarly, you could figure out which coil(s) were drawing the most power and perhaps power the others down?

I suspect they could do this but it turned out they couldn't get the cost of the design down.

So, they have a working product, but once they had a better idea of the numbers they killed it, hence the late stage cancelation.

Re: What Finally Killed AirPower

#265

Post by rkeene2 »

james-skemp wrote: post #237
rzzzt wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MagSafe was in the sweet spot IMO. Doesn't require too much alignment, symmetrical pinout, disconnects quickly and safely, low mechanical wear from use.

I've taken to buying magnetic USB cables for this reason. Plug a connector into the bottom of phone/tablet, put a cable at work, in car, and next to the bed, and it's super easy to connect and disconnect, with no worry that the Micro-B connection is getting bent (with cats and a child we've gone through way more USB Micro-B cables than I would have expected).

There are also magnetic USB-C adapters that do USB, power, and HDMI. I use one to dock my laptop.

Re: What Finally Killed AirPower

#266

Post by saagarjha »

wickedsmile wrote: post #227
saagarjha wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s why Apple invests in quality control to prevent this from occurring.

No amount of quality control can work against the long tail events, it's simply impossible.

Yup. The best they can do is reduce the probability of it happening.

Re: What Finally Killed AirPower

#267

Post by nikofeyn »

esemor wrote: post #144

I (an Apple fan) do not consider this a failure. I love it when companies take chances and go all in on pushing the envelope. Great products do emerge from these sorts of products.

it is a failure by definition. i don’t see the point of letting your love of a company aid in changing the definitions of words and meaning of concepts.

and i personally feel this failure is an indication that their product line isn’t as streamlined and consistent as they market it or they’d like it to be. because this is a wireless charger, which has already existed on the market for many years. so why did the airpower fail or why is it so different from the others? well, for one, it was trying to charge three different types of devices, which probably complicated their solution.

and their response is typical apple. it seems they actually couldn’t make it work at all or pass standards, not this idea that they have every going good but it doesn’t meet their “high quality standards”.

Re: What Finally Killed AirPower

#268

Post by eridius »

perfect_wave wrote: post #118
eridius wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've had my wireless charger for 4 months now and never once experienced this. You put it down and it makes a slight vibration to tell you its charging. Sometimes if I've had a few beers I don't hear the noise and I have to pick it up and drop it down again. This is still way easier than digging out the cable from between my bed and my nightstand and fiddling with it 'till it gets in exactly the right spot. Now I use…

It occurs to me that what made my phone fall off the sweet spot wasn't actually me bumping it, it was vibrations from notifications received during the night.

Re: What Finally Killed AirPower

#269

Post by NeedMoreTea »

X-Istence wrote: post #255
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I never understood, even slightly. Why not just give an iPod / iPhone dock without all the wireless bullshit? I prefer a dock as it holds phone at a handy angle, syncs, and doesn't have the myriad of drawbacks of bluetooth. Smartphone battery life is so shit, on every model, that I always plug my phone in. Even if the cable / socket is only going to be around for minutes. So no saving here. In the days o…

Here's a wireless charger from Anker that sits at an angle that I use at my desk: https://www.amazon.com/Anker-Qi-Certified-Compatible-Fast-Ch... With the angle it sits at, when notifications come in FaceID will correctly ID me and unlock the device so I can at a glance see what the notification is. As for syncing? All of that is done to the cloud, so that's not really something I care much about.

Quite - why complexify and lower the charge efficiency it by making it wireless to hold it in exactly the same position as dock?

A perfect example - to my mind - of where a dock would be better, and probably cheaper.

As far as cloud goes, I realise I'm an outlier - perhaps not so much on HN - but I want local copies and start by mistrusting cloud unless I have adequate redundancy. So iPhone gets locally backed up still. Can't see that changing soon, wireless or no. :)

Re: What Finally Killed AirPower

#270

Post by Phlarp »

wickedsmile wrote: post #228
Phlarp wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

residential lithium fires are unlikely to be coming from phones. (unless people still have those exploding Notes still kicking around) Far more likely to be lithium batteries being used or abused in a hobbyist capacity. E-cigs and RC are both ripe for it when users have lower quality cells to begin with, routinely discharge them above the rated current and then charge with sometimes questionable chargers. Worse yet w…

What protection mechanism do we've of one of the SMD resistor or IC in the protection circuit fails?

I'm pretty comfortable assuming that Apple wouldn't design a lipo charging circuit that could fail in an unsafe way due to a single component failure, but I can't speak specifically to what those might be.
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