Apple engineers are picking up work on the company’s ill-fated AirPower project, according to a new report, with plans to relaunch the charging mat later in the year.
A source said on Twitter that Apple’s engineers on the Sharing and Proximity networking team were testing a new charging mat known as the ‘C68’ internally and that the company’s prototypes could lead to the AirPower being released publicly later in the year.
Tech analyst Jon Prosser has suggested that Apple has sent home AirPower prototypes to some of its engineers and that they have managed to address some of the problems faced by the previous AirPower by adding an A11 chip to manage the device and its heating.
Speaking of the changes, Prosser said on Twitter that, “because the Apple Watch uses a tweaked proprietary charging method, it requires more energy to charge. In previous prototypes, if you placed an Apple Watch on the mat alongside other devices, the entire mat would overheat, and in most cases, combust. (Not joking.)”
He added: “Using the A11, this new prototype has the ability to route power to specific coil regions and can dynamically wait for temperatures to drop before applying more power – preventing it from overheating.”
Apple first announced the AirPower in 2017 but called time on the project almost two years later, telling consumers that they could “not achieve our high standards,” reportedly as the device was overheating when charging iPhones, Apple Watches, and AirPods.
Earlier in the year, reliable analyst Ming-Chi Kuo suggested that Apple was working on a smaller version of the AirPower in the first six months of the year, but this may have been pushed back or postponed due to the coronavirus and issues with manufacturing.
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