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Comment by ProAm | Hacker News Reader

Will these devices charge on a normal Qi charging pad?

Not the apple watch. That was the draw of it.

Was AirPower supposed to support the watch? I don't see how that would be possible given the curved shape of the watch back.

eh? The back of the watch itself is flat.

John Gruber says he saw a prototype backstage of an event a couple years ago, put his watch on and it started charging just fine, incidentally.

The back of the watch is very much curved. It's not as noticeable when people are wearing them because the watch sits right in between your wrist bones. https://i.gzn.jp/img/2018/09/21/apple-watch-series-4-open/p4...

It's flat enough to stay inside a 7mm charging range. (Or the inch plus that newer chargers can supposedly do.)

gah. You're right, I'm wrong. Dumb.

Yes. The concept behind AirPower was multi-device charging on a single mat.

My iPhone 8 works on a regular fast-charging Qi pad, I'd hope that the Airpods are the same way.

They do.

The Apple Watch is the only thing that doesn’t use Qi.

Yes.

Yes

Interesting. I wonder what the high standard hang up was for apple then? It's an older technology (Qi), or I wonder if the hardware team was pulled off of new products to go back and fix the keyboards they are still having issues? Or maybe it was wasnt going to sell at a price point to bring in enough margin?

Its not true. Apple Watches dont use Qi charging so that was at least one hurdle.

They were trying to use multiple overlapping "3D" charging coils so you could place multiple devices in any orientation, but supposedly it was causing overheating issues

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