Leaked Photos Take Us Inside the AirPower That Never Was

AirPower prototype coils Credit: Mr-white (@laobaiTD) / Twitter
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Apple’s AirPower charging mat has been one of the company’s most famous failures in recent years — a rare misstep where Apple jumped the gun and chose to pre-announce a product long before it was ready to ship, forcing it to announce its cancellation almost a year-and-half later after completely missing its release deadline.

Of course, Apple likely works on a great many projects that fail to materialize, but the difference between those and AirPower and that most of the company’s ambitions don’t see the light of day until they’re ready to be unveiled to the public. Apple has a few other historic cancellations, but almost all of these were from the Apple of yesteryear, so few have been quite so recent, and quite so public, as the debacle with AirPower.

While Apple never officially shared its exact reasons for scrapping the wireless charging pad — it simply said that it would “not achieve our high standards” — many technical analysts believed that it was simply too ambitious; while charging mats have existed for a long time, Apple was trying to create a magical new solution that would allow users to drop up to three devices onto the mat without having to worry about exact placement, and that required pushing the laws of physics with a considerably more complex design.

The result would have either been a product that was either impossible to produce at all, or would have been so advanced and expensive that it would have required Apple to price it out of the market.

Now a new leaked video alleging to show a prototype of the infamous charging mat shows just how complicated and challenging the design that Apple was going for actually was.

Inside AirPower

Twitter leaker Mr-white (@laobaiTD), who has been known for sharing leaked component photos in the past, tweeted out some photos and a video from Chinese social network bilibili showing a detailed teardown of what appears to be an AirPower prototype.

The images show a charging mat that clearly resembles the design of AirPower, but inside we can see the multiple overlapping wireless charging coils — 14 in total — that we had previously heard would have been a necessary part of Apple’s “drop-your-device-anywhere-on-it” ambitions.

The teardown also shows a circuit board that’s far more sophisticated than what you’d find in the typical wireless charger, however there were rumours at the time that the device would be powered by one of Apple’s A-series chips to handle all of the complex power management requirements, not to mention being able to pass charging status and other information to and between Apple devices.

The overlapping coils, however, were believed by many to be the real problem that hampered AirPower from coming to fruition; although AirPower isn’t the only charging mat to use multiple coils, the videos show them packed much more closely together, leading to the potential for problems with overheating and interference.

To be clear, it’s not certain that these pictures are actually of AirPower, since there are no identifying markings that specifically show it as an Apple product, or even telltale signs of Apple’s engineering efforts of Apple-specific components like an A-series chip, although the presence of a Lightning port on the back does strongly point to it being an AirPower prototype rather than a third-party product, and the complicated design definitely goes beyond most other wireless chargers that we’ve seen.

AirPower Redux?

While the cancellation of AirPower last March certainly sounded like Apple was driving the final nail into the coffin for the product line, several rumours this year have suggested that Apple is still working on at least some kind of wireless charging product.

In the very least, Apple could be working on a smaller single-device charging pad, according to a report that surfaced from the often-accurate Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Although Kuo’s original prediction suggested that we should have seen something by now, this particular report gained more steam as rumours surfaced of a mysterious magnetic ring on the iPhone 12, which could be used to help align with an Apple-specific wireless charger for more efficient wireless charging.

However, other leaks have suggested that AirPower may not be dead after all, with reports that Apple employees are testing a new AirPower prototype with an A11 chip — the same chip found in the iPhone 8 and iPhone X which would supposedly offer the kind of horsepower needed to intelligently route charging power to the necessary coils and handle thermal management too.

Almost all of these AirPower-specific leaks, however, came from Jon Prosser, who while originally quite accurate, has had a more mixed track record for Apple leaks lately, and in the case of AirPower, Prosser also appeared to be duped by a fake photo of a non-Apple charging mat, destroying some of his credibility for this latest set of leaks.

Regardless, however, Apple is a company that’s known for learning from its mistakes, and we have no doubt that it hasn’t given up completely on offering a wireless charger, but it’s also not going to repeat its mistake of revealing anything this time around before it’s absolutely certain that it has a working product that it can actually ship to the public.

[The information provided in this article has NOT been confirmed by Apple and may be speculation. Provided details may not be factual. Take all rumors, tech or otherwise, with a grain of salt.]

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