What exactly happened to Air power? Apple announced its wireless charging solution a year ago and hasn’t talked about it since. Rumor has it that AirPower may never be released and Apple may have to go back to the drawing board.
Apple promised an impressive multi-device wireless charging solution with AirPower. Place your iPhone, Apple Watch and AirPods (charging case sold separately) on the pad and they will all charge at the same time. You don’t need multiple different chargers, and you don’t have to specifically position each device in the right place.
Sounds great, but that’s the last we heard about it. Apple didn’t talk about AirPower at all during its event today. In fact, Apple didn’t mention wireless charging at all when talking about the new iPhone XS and XR. The new iPhones support faster wireless charging, but Apple didn’t want to talk about it.
Apple’s website doesn’t even have much information about AirPower. The iPhone X page, which promised AirPower, is now gone. There’s a photo of AirPower buried in the bottom of the AirPods product page, which promises that the AirPods wireless charging case is “coming soon.” This is another product that has been delayed for who knows how long.
We don’t know what’s going on, but it doesn’t look good. John Gruber, who has inside sources at Apple, offers the best information we can find:
AirPower must be well and truly screwed up. Nobody at Apple will say a word about it, even unofficially. And as a result, they didn’t even mention inductive charging during the event, even though the XS and XR both charge faster than the X.
—John Gruber (@gruber) September 12, 2018
Gruber goes further Bold Fireball, saying he wouldn’t be surprised if Apple scrapped the product.
Yikes. That doesn’t sound good. If you were expecting AirPower, you might want buy a standard Qi wireless charger rather. I’ve been charging my iPhone 8 wirelessly for a year and it’s very convenient, even without AirPower.
