According to a recent Chinese-language Commercial Times report cited by trade publication DigiTimes, Apple signed a component contract with supplier Lite-On Semi which should provide several parts that the iPhone maker needs in order to realize fast wireless charging on iPhone 8.
The Taiwan-based supplier has been tasked with building GPP bridge rectifiers that help reduce thermal issue and increase efficiency of wireless power transmission.
Find out what to do if you're experiencing cracking audio, popping sound, clicking, buzzing, and static noises in your AirPods and Beats headphones when listening to songs, watching movies, or during calls.
Market research firm Slice Intelligence estimated that AirPods, Apple's $159 wireless earphones, took one out of each four dollars spent online on wireless headphones in December 2016. Launched on December 13, AirPods grabbed an estimated 26 percent share of online revenue in the wireless headphone market, beating out Apple's premium audio brand Beats which captured an estimated 15.4 percent of the market, down from 24.1 percent between the start of 2015 and December 13.
In other words, Apple has managed to capture one-fourth of the wireless headphones market since the launch of AirPods. And if you also count Beats sales, the Cupertino company took almost 40 percent of online revenue in the wireless headphone market.
A new patent application for “Wireless audio output devices,” published Thursday by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), describes exactly how Apple's new W1 chip inside AirPods enables zero-configuration Bluetooth pairing. In a nutshell, the charging case that comes with AirPods doubles as a physical pairing interface.
Aside from a built-in battery, the case features its own microprocessor and communications stack, a motion-detecting lid for starting the seamless pairing process with an Apple device and a physical button for manual Bluetooth pairing with non-Apple hardware, like Android handsets.
Much has been said about the virtues of the W1 chip Apple started baking into their latest wireless Beats line-up and of course the AirPods. By now we know for sure that W1 facilitates a much faster pairing process, as do we know that the chip significantly amplifies both battery life and conservation techniques. What’s less prominently talked about - at least from official sides - is the operating range of these wireless headphones and the presumed effect the W1 chip addition has had on that benchmark.
For I felt information on the internet was just a bit too murky to count on, I decided to take it upon myself and conduct a little experiment: I packed my rucksack with four headphones (two of which boast the new W1 chip) and headed to a nearby park in order to pit them against each other. Pairing them one after another and then slowly making a bee-line for the opposite direction, one thing quickly became clear: the results for the maximum distance obtainable aren’t surprising in terms of order, but they definitely are in their clarity.
Rumored Apple partner Energous says its truly wireless charging tech is nearly market-ready. In a phone call ahead of CES, the company's CEO Steve Rizzone told The Verge their wireless charging transmitters, capable charging devices wirelessly from several feet away, will begin shipping by the end of 2017.
As you may recall, the company made a similar claim at CES 2015, but Rizzone says their plans changed after it signed a "key strategic partnership" following the convention. The deal saw Energous refocus its efforts on miniaturizing the tech, and gave its partner the right to be the first to ship it in its products.
Samsung is probably going to rip off AirPods next: the company should debut all-new wireless earphones alongside Galaxy S8 launch, according to confidential information received by SamMobile. “Samsung is surely looking to put out a product that competes with Apple’s AirPods,” reads the report.
Samsung, of course, was found guilty of lifting Apple's hardware and software designs in the past.
It currently owes the Cupertino firm hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. Back in 2015, Samsung copied the look and feel of Apple's wired EarPods for Galaxy S6.
According to a brief report in the Chinese-language Economic Daily Times newspaper that was quoted Friday by DigiTimes, strong sales of the W1-enhanced AirPods and robust demand for Apple's earphones during the year-end holidays have prompted supplier Inventec to increase production capacity. While Inventec declined to comment on its orders, it's reportedly begun expanding capacity at its Shanghai plants, which are currently working overtime to deliver orders.
Asked by CNBC to share some thoughts in terms of AirPods, Apple's boss Tim Cook responded by calling his company's first Bluetooth earphones “a runaway success”. The CEO visited the floor of the New York Stock Exchange earlier this morning while on vacation.
“We're making them just as fast as we can,” Cook responded when asked about the lack of available stock. Cook also shared a few tidbits regarding Apple's holiday sales in a quick interview with CNBC.
An unknown portion of early AirPods adopters are faced with battery drain issues with the charging case, which was designed to extend AirPods' advertised five-hour run time to up to 24 hours while on the go.
According to a thread on Reddit, one customer's charging case went from a full 100 percent charge to just fifty percent after leaving his AirPods in the case overnight. “The other two days I used about five hours and the case was already down to thirty percent,” one poster wrote.
Having torn apart Apple's AirPods wireless earphones and their charging case, repair masters over at iFixit have now posted their initial observations. AirPods have so many components crammed into tight space that the they're virtually not repairable or recyclable. As for the charging case, an X-ray analysis of its logic board reveals a few “quality issues” that may have contributed to the delayed AirPods launch.
While Apple's online store this morning began accepting orders for $159 AirPods ahead of their Christmas delivery, another pair of earphones from Apple that use W1 chip just got delayed.
Announced at the iPhone 7 event in September and originally listed as arriving in late-2016, Beats X Wireless Earphones won't be available before February 2017, according to Apple's online store.