In 2017 Apple announced that they were working on a unique product. The AirPower as it was dubbed, was supposed to be a wireless charging pad that could charge multiple Apple products at the same time no matter the orientation of their placement.
In theory, AirPower could charge your iPhone, Apple Watch and AirPods on the same wireless mat simultaneously. This got many people excited because it was a time where wireless technology and wireless charging, in particular, were starting to gain popularity.
In theory, AirPower could charge your iPhone, Apple Watch and AirPods on the same wireless mat simultaneously. This got many people excited because it was a time where wireless technology and wireless charging, in particular, were starting to gain popularity.
Sadly though, the project was officially canceled in March 2019 due to its “inability to meet the high standards” of Apple hardware. There was not going to be any replacement or alternative for this tech, basically, it was dead. The real reason for the cancellation was overheating due to its multi-coil design. Some engineers at Apple looked at the design of the AirPower and argued it could never work, while others were confident they could find a way to not make it overheat. Ultimately, Apple decided to side with the latter.
There are charging mats that can charge multiple products at the same time but with those, each has to be placed at a particular place on the mat to charge, but Apple wanted to take that one step further. They wanted their AirPower to charge any product, no matter where it was placed on the mat. To achieve this, they were going to have as much as 30 coils on the mat. Therefore anywhere a device is placed on the mat, it will find the closest coil that and draw power from it. This never came into fruition, or so we thought.
Jon Prosser, a reputable Apple leaker recently tweeted that the engineers at Apple have not given up on the AirPower just yet and are “trying to re-engineer the coils to displace heat more effectively”. He went on to state that the product is back in the prototyping stage but also cautioned against assumptions and expectation that AirPower would make it to customers.
Whether this is AirPower or just a wireless charging pad, we can't tell as of now. However, Jon Prosser insists that he posted the leak only after he had sourced it from multiple contacts. We should not expect Apple to make any official announcement until they are totally sure that everything works fine due to how it initially turned out. We will be updating you on any progress so watch this space.