Here’s Why Apple’s iPhone 11 Didn’t Get Two-Way Wireless Charging

One of the most rumoured predictions that didn’t make it into the iPhone 11 last year was two-way wireless charging, a feature that would allow the iPhone to be used as a power bank to recharge other wireless devices — most notably things like the Apple Watch or AirPods.

The feature was first predicted to be coming to the 2019 iPhones by veteran analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who is more often right about such things more than he is wrong, so when the iPhone 11 models landed in September without the feature, it was a rare inaccuracy for Kuo.

That said, some reports suggested the hardware was there and that Apple may have simply been waiting to unlock it in a software update, perhaps due to technical or regulatory issues. There continued to be conflicting reports on it, however, suggesting that perhaps some components were added, but the design was never finalized. For Kuo’s part, he simply said Apple pulled it because the charging efficiency didn’t meet Apple’s requirements.

The feature would have followed in the footsteps of Samsung’s Galaxy S10 flagships, which included the feature earlier last year, calling it “Wireless PowerShare.” However, like many of Samsung’s bleeding-edge innovations, its bilateral charging feature has received mixed reviews, suggesting that Apple may have made the right choice to pass on including it in the iPhone.

A Better Way

Although bilateral charging that uses the Qi wireless standard would offer the most universal compatibility with other devices and accessories, it’s difficult to imagine how it would be useful or practical to use the iPhone as a wireless charger for anything other than an accessory like AirPods, or perhaps the Apple Watch, the latter of which isn’t fully Qi-compatible anyway due to the much smaller coil size.

So it turns out that there may be a better way ahead for Apple to introduce two-way charging to the iPhone, in the form of a new NFC specification that would allow wireless charging over the NFC protocol already found in many devices.

NFC, which is short for Near Field Communication, is the technology that’s used in the iPhone to support Apple Pay as well as reading NFC tags for other purposes, and it’s been supported by many Android devices for even longer. While the new standard wouldn’t be able to just switch on charging using the existing NFC hardware in today’s iPhones, it would offer an alternative to the more complex and higher-power Qi charging that would likely stand to improve the efficiency for charging smaller devices without creating excessive battery drain and heating problems.

You see, one of the fundamental problems with Qi charging is that it’s not terribly efficient at the best of times, since more energy is lost in the form of heat than with traditional wired chargers. This isn’t a huge problem with a Qi charger that’s plugged into the wall, since with any properly-designed charger we’re talking about the kind of energy loss that would amount to hundredths of a cent on your monthly energy bills, but it can be more of a problem for the iPhone where you want to eke out as much battery life as possible from your device.

Much of this energy loss from heat is due to the higher power levels that Qi chargers run at — 5 watts and above — however since the new NFC specification would cap out at only 1 watt (or 0.2 amps at 5 volts), it’s potentially much more efficient, and would offer more than enough power to charge small accessories like the AirPods or the Apple Watch. In fact, that’s about the same amount of power that the Apple Watch charger provides anyway.

It’s unclear if Apple knew that this NFC spec was coming, but it seems likely as the company has been a member of the NFC Forum for several years and actively participates in the approval of new NFC specifications. So this would certainly explain why Apple abandoned its plans for Qi-based two-way charging on last year’s iPhone, since it knew a better method was on the horizon.

While all of Apple’s iPhone and Apple Watch models have included NFC hardware for years, Apple would still need to make some hardware changes to support the feature. However, it’s interesting to consider the possibility that maybe it already has; since nobody else knew about the NFC specification last fall, it’s possible that the hidden hardware in the iPhone 11 was actually designed to lay the groundwork for the new NFC spec. iFixit definitely found some things inside the new iPhones that pointed to reverse wireless charging, even though other reliable sources had suggested that Apple had scrapped its plans entirely.

While devices like the AirPods Wireless Charging case don’t already include any kind of NFC chips, it seems like it would be a fairly simple matter for Apple to add the technology in the same way that Qi charging came to the AirPods last year. Going forward, however, it could also save Apple the trouble of building in Qi support to future devices that may already include NFC but don’t otherwise need traditional wireless charging, such as its upcoming AirTags.