Bloomberg reported yesterday that a wireless charging case for AirPods that’s compatible with the long-awaited AirPower charger and the Qi standard is coming later this year, and now Nikkei Asian Review confusingly claims that this product will be able to charge iPhones, too.
A mistranslated story?
“Users of iPhones will soon be able to wirelessly charge their handsets using the charging case for Apple’s popular AirPods wireless earphones,” reads the article.
An unnamed industry source familiar with the plan said that a revised charging case could be available at the end of this year although the schedule is subject to change.
Apple’s long overdue AirPower wireless charging mat will be able to wirelessly charge multiple devices at once, like your AirPods, an iPhone and Apple Watch. The Cupertino technology giant has actually developed proprietary technology to engineer the multi-device Qi accessory, but has promised to make it an integral part of the Qi industry specification.
Problems with this report
According to iFixit, the battery inside the current AirPods charging case has approximately sixteen times the power capacity of the one inside each AirPod.
You could argue that it doesn’t make much sense that an AirPods Qi charging case would wirelessly charge an iPhone, and you’d be right—the battery inside the case is a 398 mAh cell.
By comparison, the battery inside your iPhone X has a capacity of 2,716 mAh.
It would make more sense if it were the other way around, if an iPhone could wirelessly charge an AirPods Qi case. It’s also possible that the report refers to a new AirPods charging case design rather than the one Apple demoed at the iPhone X introduction last September.
Thoughts?