2019 iPhone will charge AirPods Wireless Charging case, have larger battery
A new supply chain report from Ming-Chi Kuo declares that the 2019 iPhone lineup will boast two-way wireless charging, and has gone so far to name Apple's suppliers for the technology.
One mockup of a possible triple-lens design.
In Monday's report seen by AppleInsider, Ming-Chi Kuo talks about wireless charging, but this time, is naming names. New suppliers named for the bi-directional Qi charging said to be coming to the 2019 iPhone are Luxshare, an existing supplier, and Sunway -- a new entrant to Apple's supply lines for wireless charging.
STMicro is said to be on tap for the controlling circuitry, with a companion chip intended to boost charging efficiency provided by TI.
The batteries are said to grow by as much as 25 percent in the iPhone XS-sized model, with a similar power increase but lower volumetric increase of up to 15 percent for the iPhone XR. The extra volume is provided mostly by a new OLED screen laminate, with fewer needed layers than the existing models.
The iPhone XR replacement isn't expected to see a large battery size increase, growing by between 0 percent and 5 percent.
On February 17, Kuo predicted that the 2019 iPhone would be able to wirelessly charge other devices. Other technologies predicted are an ultra-wide band for indoor position location, and a triple-lens camera.
The analyst maintains that all 2019 iPhone models will retain a Lightning connector rather than adopt USB-C, as the iPad Pro range has. Also expected to BE retained are Apple's TrueDepth camera and an associated display notch.
TrueDepth may see an update with a higher-power flood illuminator for better Face ID recognition, Kuo said, while a new 6.1-inch LCD model might be upgraded to incorporate 4GB of RAM, up from the current 3GB in the iPhone XR.
Kuo has still not made remarks confirming a previous rumor that suggested iPhones will be getting a laser for rear-facing depth mapping. That could aid not just in photography but in augmented reality, though its effective range may be just 15 feet.
Rumors from the summer of 2018 about the 2019 iPhone suggested that the iPhone would shift to USB-C in 2019. USB-C on the iPhone in 2019 would shift all of Apple's mainline devices to the technology, allowing for one cable to be used across the entire lineup for data and charging, but would spark complaints about accessory incompatibility, like it did when Apple shifted from the 30-pin connector to Lightning in 2012.
Apple will most likely announce 2019 iPhones at a September press event, and ship them shortly after.
One mockup of a possible triple-lens design.
In Monday's report seen by AppleInsider, Ming-Chi Kuo talks about wireless charging, but this time, is naming names. New suppliers named for the bi-directional Qi charging said to be coming to the 2019 iPhone are Luxshare, an existing supplier, and Sunway -- a new entrant to Apple's supply lines for wireless charging.
STMicro is said to be on tap for the controlling circuitry, with a companion chip intended to boost charging efficiency provided by TI.
The batteries are said to grow by as much as 25 percent in the iPhone XS-sized model, with a similar power increase but lower volumetric increase of up to 15 percent for the iPhone XR. The extra volume is provided mostly by a new OLED screen laminate, with fewer needed layers than the existing models.
The iPhone XR replacement isn't expected to see a large battery size increase, growing by between 0 percent and 5 percent.
On February 17, Kuo predicted that the 2019 iPhone would be able to wirelessly charge other devices. Other technologies predicted are an ultra-wide band for indoor position location, and a triple-lens camera.
The analyst maintains that all 2019 iPhone models will retain a Lightning connector rather than adopt USB-C, as the iPad Pro range has. Also expected to BE retained are Apple's TrueDepth camera and an associated display notch.
TrueDepth may see an update with a higher-power flood illuminator for better Face ID recognition, Kuo said, while a new 6.1-inch LCD model might be upgraded to incorporate 4GB of RAM, up from the current 3GB in the iPhone XR.
Kuo has still not made remarks confirming a previous rumor that suggested iPhones will be getting a laser for rear-facing depth mapping. That could aid not just in photography but in augmented reality, though its effective range may be just 15 feet.
Rumors from the summer of 2018 about the 2019 iPhone suggested that the iPhone would shift to USB-C in 2019. USB-C on the iPhone in 2019 would shift all of Apple's mainline devices to the technology, allowing for one cable to be used across the entire lineup for data and charging, but would spark complaints about accessory incompatibility, like it did when Apple shifted from the 30-pin connector to Lightning in 2012.
Apple will most likely announce 2019 iPhones at a September press event, and ship them shortly after.
Comments
The 2019 XS successor will have the same dimensions, same display size, but will have 25% more battery capacity, about 3300 mAHr or 13 WHr? Primarily because the OLED panels will be thinner.
The 2019 XR successor will have the same dimensions, same display size, but will have less than 5% more battery capacity. Likely because the LCD panel will be the same as the 2019 model, even though you say “with a similar power increase but lower volumetric increase of up to 15 percent for the iPhone XR”. The way it reads is that the XR will have 25% larger battery, but it’s interl volume for the battery is only going up 15%, but in the end, the actual battery capacity for the XR won’t be changing at all. 5% is nothing to write home about.
All the X models could be thinner, so hopefully this means the XR successor will be thinner. I can see however, Apple wanting the XS model to have the same or better battery life than the XR so that the cheaper model doesn’t have the feature advantage of better battery runtime.
The inductive-out battery charging sounds like a pretty minor feature to me. I’ve never had a desire to charge my AirPods case. I want more AirPods runtime, but charging the case? No. If AirPods could last say 6 to 8 hours, or 5 to 7 hours after a couple of years, that’s a really good sweet spot.
What happened is very clear: a few years ago Apple was faced with the decision of adopting Qi or doing their own proprietary wireless charging from the ground up. Qi sucks, and the solutions on the market at the time were abysmal, so Apple had to be seriously considering the latter. But someone made the call to adopt Qi, which was the fastest and cheapest way to get wireless charging (of any kind) to the customer immediately....with the promise that they would build a proprietary layer on top of Qi to meet their standards for what wireless charging would be. Well that was a really bad bet, because 2 years on, they have failed and have now been forced to acknowledge that failure.
Now if Apple ever wants to achieve their vision, and the expectation of customers who demand better, they will have to go back to the drawing board and start from scratch with wireless charging...like they should have done 2 years ago.
Besides, it won’t work, because of efficiency problems. I cannot imagine an iPhone charging a Watch. Modifying the whole architecture to just give a couple of minutes more to AirPods would be ridiculous.
That rumour may be fake and Kuo may be promoting Samsung again by commenting about iPhone...
Long live the XR !...
From the first time I saw Samsung's reverse charge feature I've said it was a dumb gimmick. I don't know about Samsung's hearing-aid headphones, but with AirPods, the battery in the case makes this unnecessary. Beyond that, you can't effectively use your phone while reverse-charging, doing so sucks battery from your phone when many people have trouble getting their phone battery to last long enough, and to top it off, you lose energy in the charging process. Lose-lose-lose.
It's also worth noting that the earbuds or watch have relatively small batteries and won't drain your phone too much even when topping up on the go.
Nothing about this is a "dumb gimmick", it's actually quite useful once you understand the applications.
The one scenario where I can see this being useful is if you're traveling and forget to bring your watch charger, beyond that, I stand by my original assessment of useless gimmick.
So not a single other person of the millions of iPhone users would find this functionality useful because you don’t. Got it.