Apple AirPower’s complexity is causing delays, device might get scrapped completely

Apple’s September 12 event revealed most of what we expected to see, but one product that didn’t show up during the presentation was Apple’s wireless charging pad, called AirPower. Considering the AirPower is meant to mainly charge iPhones and Apple Watches (but also a future wireless charging case for the AirPods), experts were hoping to see it announced side by side with the new models of the devices. And while Apple is expected to host another event later this year, likely announcing new iPads and MacBooks, a new report suggests that the wireless charger won’t be making an appearance on it as well.

The report, released by Sonny Dickson, reveals that the project suffers from multiple issues that make it unfit for the market and can potentially lead to the cancellation of the product in its current form.

According to the “multiple internal sources” that agreed to share information about the mishaps of AirPower, the device suffers from three main problems.

The first comes from Apple’s desire to one-up other manufacturers by having multiple charging coils that allow users to place their devices anywhere on it. For that purpose, the engineers had between 21 and 24 overlapping coils delivering power at various rates depending on the devices being charged on top. Making the system work as intended turned out to be extremely difficult, due to interference caused by the coils and the overall result was far from acceptable when it comes to charging time.

Another problem caused by the number of coils was that the charging pad produced too much heat during use. While heat is a common side effect of charging, the levels reached by AirPower were causing reduction in performance and hindering the charging devices’ ability to receive power. The excess heat was even causing the chip controlling the AirPower to malfunction.

The problems didn’t end with the hardware side of things, however, the engineers working on the project had to deal with significant software issues as well. Communication between the charger and the devices being charged was inconsistent and led to inaccurate charge level reports, failures to activate charging and calculating remaining charging time.

According to the sources, if the problems with the current iteration are not solved, Apple could release AirPower that is completely redesigned, but if that’s the case, we won’t be hearing about it this year.