It seems...kinda dumb. Instead of plugging in a lightning cable, I can now stick a hockey puck to the back of my phone?
The “safe” in MagSafe came from its “yankability” without sending your device flying. But if my phone is laying on top of a hockey puck...it’s gonna go flying if I trip on the cable.
Why couldn’t we fill in the lightning port and use flush surface contacts, like the MagSafe of yesteryear?
I’m also not sure why my case needs to magnetize to my device, getting rid of the lip around the screen that made it less cringe to lay my phone face down.
Am I missing something? I really don’t understand this feature.
EDIT: did I see an AirPower reboot in there or am I dreaming?
MagSafe can be seen as the replacement for AirPower! It's solving the same problem in a much simpler way.
AirPower's big promise was that it was a multi-device charging mat that didn't require perfect alignment to get high power charging. Apple ultimately cancelled it, likely because this proved too difficult to do safely. (rumored to be thermal issues with the multi-coil design)
MagSafe solves the alignment problem in a simpler way. Instead of carefully aligning your phone, the magnets just "suck" your phone to the optimal charging position.
Xiaomi also solved the alignment issue in a charmingly inelegant way. Detailed in the video below, it uses motors to align the charging pad to the device.
How strong is the magnet? I can already see a benefit. Don't put you're phone "down" to charge it, put it up on the charger pad that's mounted to the wall. Can be placed out of the way where it's not in danger of being tripped over or spilled on, and frees tabletop space.
A lot of phones have almost enough metal to stick to a magnet. I bought this car mount a while ago and while it came with metal plates I found that my Nexus 6 would stick to it without anything. I later upgraded to a nexus 6P which weakly stuck, it would kinda hang off the bottom but never fell off.
I was thinking that it would be nice if we could just standardize something as simple as "stick an iron plate in the back of the phone" but I guess now I see that it would be nice if there was some sort of standard for a Qi charging location relative to whatever metal/magnets are there.
I used hard drive neodymium magnets for awhile, but recently discovered some incredibly strong magnetic strips with an adhesive backing. This gives me way more positioning freedom for my phone. These strips are neodymium and at least ~7 times stronger than every other magnetic strip. (which all use ceramics).
You can find the magnets I'm talking about on McMasterCarr [1] or just search for "NeoFlex magnets". Besides McMasterCarr, I can only find them from European sellers.
IMHO, anyone buying adhesive magnet strips would be happier buying these, but no one advertises any sort of standardized magnetic strength per area unit. This makes the differences very hard to determine for most consumers. The typical flexible ceramic magnets, like this one [3], support 70g/cm2 [4], while the NeoFlex ones I mentioned support 400g/cm2. ( 800lbs/sqft)
Also many people try to stick magnets to magnets, works works for typical magnets, but that doesn't work well at all for the multi-pole magnetic strips like these. It works just enough that people blame the magnets for being weak, when really they might be quite strong if you just used a thin steel plate instead.
Wires only pick up current when they’re moving through a magnetic field. Just sitting in one is fine. Although the internal compass isn’t going to work great.
Also people significantly overestimate the amount of current a normal (something you’re gonna encounter in day-to-day life) magnetic field can induce in a wire. There’s a good reason motors are packed with so many windings, you either need an incredibly large magnetic field, or a crap ton of wire, to get an interesting amount of current.
Current also picks up force as it moves in a magnetic field, but it's not like the electrons are going to fall off.
Magnetic fields can saturate ferrites and affect coils, but the slight deviations in few components should be nothing the closed loop circuitry won't handle. You'd need a stronger/closer magnet for that.
Solid state circuits usually have tiny sensitivity to static magnetic fields as opposed to EM waves, which they need to handle gracefully.
The reason for magnetic field strength falling off as 1/r^3 is interesting: the biot-savart law says that magnetic field falls off as 1/r^2 from a magnetic source, but in reality sources tend to be better approximated by magnetic dipoles than magnetic monopoles. A "north pole" is always accompanied by a "south pole", and at distance there are "interaction effects" such that a part of the field strength is "canceled out".
I've never noticed an issue. And I have used Waze at least three or four times over the years, both with my old Note 3 and now with a Samsung A50, with no issues.
Aira's FreePower technology seems to be what Apple was trying to achieve with Airpower. Haven't tried it yet (because it's expensive) but from the review I read, it's legit.
Unfortunately this base station does not live up to its promises. You still have to perfectly place your phone to get a charge, unless you want to position it horizontally and take up 2 charging coils to get it right. I returned it.
Since I can't edit my comment, I'll correct it here. As others have pointed out, I bought and returned the "Base Station" because it only had 2 coils and needed precise placement. I have not used the "Base Station Pro" (but will give it a shot, since it has some advanced tech). I jumped the gun on my comment, so the above comment is not accurate.
if you want the one thing that will work, though with a much less polished very un-Apple-y design, this is expensive, huge, and it will work basically edge to edge.
I will say having used it, I understand why Apple axed the idea. It is huge and gets hot and I assume it is thicker than Airpower would have been.
This also assumes Apple doesn't plan on scaling the spec. Other phones are already up to 40W charging, and several OEMs have been tipped to be aiming for at 100 by next year.
It's likely solve the gap of "I can't use my phone while it's wirelessly charging". With the magsafe thing you can just clunk the charger to the back of your phone and keep using it. While battery life is still crap on these (side note - I didn't hear a single thing in the presentation about battery life... yikes) people are going to be charging their phones while they use them.
I hate to be a pessimist but with them not including a charger or headphones, they're slowly moving toward no data port whatsoever
I guess my confusion is basically that: if I want to use my phone while it charges, I just plug it in with a lightning cable. I don’t need it to “wirelessly” charge if I’m having to connect something to the device anyway. It seems to be a weird 3rd option for charging.
They’re definitely getting rid of the port, maybe next year.
Consider that iPad has replaced lightning with usb-c and that having ports takes up a lot of space... I think they are just planning to phase out lightning and go port-less on the iPhone.
Sure, it has existed for several years. But I’ve yet to drive a single car that supports it. By my understanding only super expensive high-end luxury cars support it, and even then it’s hit and miss. I’ve never seen it with my own eyes.
https://www.cars.com/articles/wireless-apple-carplay-and-and... lists 2019 model cars with Wireless CarPlay. I've driven one and tried out the wireless CarPlay, and it works more or less like the wired version (no lag, as smooth as wired CarPlay AFAICT). The only major inconvenience is probably that, if you have a passenger and they want to use their phone for music, you will need to pair their phone to the car instead of just finding the wire and plugging in. Takes about 30 seconds to a minute to go through all the setup. While the cars listed are not cheap by any means, there are a few moderately optioned minivans around the same cost of some of the less expensive cars from BMW (base cost around $38K USD).
They even tried to blame Apple for this, only to have their lie publicly called out by Apple. This created such outrage that the decision had to be reversed, but for me that's enough - they showed their true colors and are very likely to come up with further crap in the future.
I agree that it was ridiculous and to be on guard for these shenanigans. 100%.
Today though, BMW is not charging a “subscription” fee and much more importantly, all of their iDrive data is provided for free with free software updates. And yes, competitive pressure probably forced them to, but it is much better than just 5 or 6 years ago where you were charged for yearly map updates by buying a DVD. They are also the first car manufacturer to support the CarKey feature so they have changed (for now anyways).
Two advantages: (1) the Lightning port can wear out if used often, but the magnets won't; (2) you can attach and remove the phone from a magnetic charger with one hand and without looking / in the dark.
I have not had an iphone come in with a worn lighting port. 10/10 times it has been extremely packed pocket lint preventing the cable from seating correctly.
I've had that problem, but I've also had the cable clips in the sides of the socket lose some of their grip over time. They're spring steel, but even spring steel is still somewhat subject to plastic deformation with enough cycles.
It's never gotten bad enough to be a problem with mine, but I'm still happier to be using magnetic charging cables most of the time. That's primarily for the convenience of it, which is significant, but I don't mind that they also preserve the connector.
(They're especially convenient in the car. I have an SE, but even with a phone that supported inductive charging, I suspect I'd stick with the magnetic-mount-and-cable arrangement - it's exactly as convenient as inductive charging, with no risk of compromise on the strength of the mount in order to get one with half a transformer in it.)
The lightning port can essentially loosen over time, meaning the “snap” of the cable grips less and the plug can become susceptible to falling out. This has happened to me, even as someone who takes good care of his phone.
Even on very old very carelessly used phones I have not seen this. Every single time the lightning cable does not snap into place, it's some packed lint that is the problem. It can be removed with some care and it works fine after that.
If the wireless charging mechanism is solid state, it’s immune from mechanical wear.
Mechanical wear matters for example if you have a Roku, and the buttons in the remote control physically wear out. You can just instead use your phone app to control it over WiFi, and the WiFi antenna will “never” wear out because it’s solid state. Source: I have an old Roku
It's a good rule of thumb, but that doesn't check out in practice.
The wireless charging mechanism, while solid state, generates a lot of heat, which has the potential to degrade the battery especially in certain climates.
Solid state devices can still fail from mechanical stress. Heat cycling and strong magnetic fields could be a problem for wireless charging even if they don’t need to be. The core issue is generally trying to use the cheapest solution, not just mechanical stress.
Ethernet connectors are probably the best example of this, for servers that might be moved every few years their cheap and maintain a solid connection. It’s really desktops and especially laptops where they become such a major issue.
I’m struggling to understand your point. Phones are closer to laptops in that in typical use a wired power connection is frequently plugged and unplugged, so mechanical wear is an important consideration. Why are you bringing up Ethernet on servers in this context, when as you say the pattern of use is utterly different?
I know almost nothing about wireless charging. But have fair experience with working with WiFi devices. In my lifetime, I have observed 0 cases of failure on the WiFi client mechanism, and exactly 1 case of a WiFi router failing due to hardware. Meanwhile, power plugs are the most common part I have experienced wearing out on consumer electronics. Have you experienced lots of failures of solid state electronics due to eg. hear cycling and magnetic fields?
My point was you need to design stuff for the use case and a healthy margin. Incandescent lightbulbs are perhaps the poster child for solid state devices which with a limited lifespan. You can design lightbulbs for a 100 year lifespan at the cost of efficiency and bulb brightness. Even then an incandescent bulbs lifespan is dramatically shorter if your power cycling it every 2 minutes. But eventually stuff like electromigration for example will be an issue for solid state devices. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromigration
When designing wireless charging the same efficiency vs lifespan tradeoffs exist. Sure, they might be fine, but don’t expect them to last 20 years or anything. Further, the mats are significantly more expensive than a cable.
PS: Connector specifications are generally a dumpster fire because nobody wants to be forced to build expensive cables. And even if the spec says X, if Y is cheaper and still mostly works then you can bet people will do Y. Failure tends take a while at which point people buy a new cable vs returning the old one etc.
On my last phone, it's precisely the part that wore out first. A local guy replaced it for about $50 and I got another year of life out of the phone before I dropped it and broke the screen. (Note, this was an iPhone 6 that I replaced about a year ago)
Sure, and for some people the part that wears out first is the third SoC capacitor.
In agreggate though, the lightning port isn't the first thing that will break, and if it breaks you can use wireless charging. Whereas if you only use wireless charging there is less redundancy and the part that actually wears out the fastest, the battery, will degrade faster due to the heat.
I think the sun will outlive the lightning port. Unless the sun explodes, in which case technically it would have ended prior to its contents hitting Earth and destroying the lightning port.
Counterpoint - I have an iPhone 6 that has exactly this problem. The cable doesn't get seated properly, so occasionally it stops charging or disconnects when attached to a computer.
The primary use case is watching a movie or listening to music with headphones. Can’t charge and listen without an extra dongle. Apples solution is BT headphone they sell but it’s a bad pattern.
I agree it is a bad pattern. Remove features from a device to force you to buy an alternative accessory. Nowhere else would anybody accept this - eg. a car that came without a steering wheel so you had to buy one.
Next they'll take the screen from the phone and force you to buy an accessory screen!
a car that came without a steering wheel so you had to buy one.
When I bought a new Ford pick-up truck in the 90's, it didn't come with a rear bumper. That was an add-on. I presume because different people will want different rear bumpers (regular, towing, something else).
When I lived in the desert, I regularly saw brand pick-up trucks without tailgates, or with various specialty ones, so I assume those are also optional.
I've used Apple phones for the last ~10 years but I have held back on AirPods as I've read a few reports from people whos AirPods have lasted ~18 months before the (non-replaceable, because Apple) battery begins to heavily degrade.
I would have much preferred a USB-C plug for all my devices.
It’s nice that it’s wireless on the new iPhone and all, but it’s still an extra cable (or puck) to carry around.
Much like the headphone cable, I think that things like charging could be done in such a simple way, that the alternatives that are presented just don’t make the users lives easier and generate unnecessary waste.
I find myself thinking that at some point they'll be moving to an iPhone with no ports at all, and aren't bothering with USB-C because they'll have a transition to entirely wireless charging instead.
Yes that seems to be the direction. I'm really trying to vote with my wallet here, so I'll hope the cheap iPhones will keep the port and luckily in my city repair vouchers are out as part of the local corona relief program, so I'm giving my iPhone 7 another year or two. In fact USB-C would have been the primary reason to upgrade for me.
I would have moved to an Android device with a headphone jack and USB-C port, but I prefer to stay away from Google products as much as I can.
Going wireless with everything where it isn't necessarily needed is just a bit overrated in my opinion:
- The biggest driver in network speed to me was adding all devices I could to wired connections - there's 20+ different networks in my area and some of the devices use old Wifi standards, so I avoid all of that for devices I don't move around. Homeplug devices with higher speeds than my internet connection were necessary here to make the experience better than wireless (compared to laying new cables wireless is better to me, but I hope devices like TVs keep their LAN port)
- In the car: it's just a constant pain to switch the connected device (when more than one person is present), especially when a call comes in, simply using the headphone plug would be much quicker.
- When working: switching the devices the headphone is connected to when a call comes in between phone and laptop is equally painful, again, switching plugs would be simpler (though here at least I can walk around with the headphones, so there is a bit of a benefit).
Which almost doubles the size of what I need to carry along to simply charge my phone and more than doubles what needs to be on my table. I’d rather have a single cable on my desk, in my car etc. that ideally works across generations (from a slow ebook reader, charging headphones and power packs to connecting video and storage) and manufacturers (pretty sure the MagSafe connector won’t be available for non-licensed devices).
I've been using a anker stand for the past few years for wireless charging my iphone 8 and that works fine. Just plop the phone in place and it stands up and you can read it if it lights up.
The one thing that happened when I got that is that I never bought another lighting cable.
if it was me, I'd skip straight to Qi-only just to avoid the amount of whinging they would have to endure (here would be among the worst) about "omg another cable change!!11" for their...second cable change in two decades.
Which isn’t much better than any other phone in the industry. The difference is that other phones have been using standard cables that inter operate with each other and non phone devices as well.
So we’re now in a ridiculous situation where you have to carry fewer cables with a MacBook + Samsung setup than a MacBook + iPhone one.
all of the issues stemming from charging can be solved by having bigger battery.
Why cant they make device 1 or 2 mm thicker and have device survive a day longer. Then I just plug it in at the nightstand and dont have to worry about yanking phone as I dont have to top up charge. No need for spare cables at your car/work/relatives.
My phone always slides off the center of my wireless charger in my car and it stops charging without me noticing -- I would love to have this feature there.
True, the alignment help would be great. I had a Palm in like 2006 that had a magnetic wireless charging dock. Ended up modding a Galaxy Nexus to use it in the car.
I have a wireless charger in the car, which has clasps to hold the phone. It has never misaligned. This simpler solution seems preferable to the more complex MagSafe solution.
Maybe it's because I have been playing with magnets since I was a kid, things snapping together because of magnets are no longer magical, although ferrofluids are still pretty cool.
Another note: the iPhone 12s still support Qi wireless charging, up to 7.5W. MagSafe allows faster 15W charging (sigh). Apple said during the event that it wants a MagSafe ecosystem, so expect chargers, mounts and so on from third parties.- nilay Patel on Twitter
I think the concept of the wallet that can quickly snap on and off of the phone is pretty neat. I currently use a case that has a wallet functionality (for my driver's license and credit cards) and that doesn't allow me to use wireless charging without completely taking the case off.
I suspect the magnet will make it a sure shot thing with the new iPhone though. With current phones you can often get away with keeping a hotel card in the same pocket as the phone.
For NFC, the NFC antenna on an iPhone is on the top rather than the back, so as long as you only have one NFC credit card in the wallet on the back and then presumably it will work based on if you tap the top or the back of the iPhone to the reader
PopSocket has already confirmed they're working on something. This will be awesome for those of us who don't use wireless charging because of our popsockets.
Besides the convenience, it must be a way for Apple to eventually drop the charging port completely, maybe even with the next version. No police data tampering, but also no jailbreaks, a physically walled device.
This is much simpler, they wanted more sales of accessories to show higher sales revenue. Playing up the "eco-friendly" messaging, they're able to cut costs and avoid including a charger +headphones.
The changes forces most customers to buy either a wireless airpods or a new magSafe charger. This become an easy 'attach' sale for all retailers and virtually any sales person. Customers will be told that their device does not come with a charger and the apple authorized, overpriced charger is the best option to use with their new $700-$1K+ device.
This allows Apple to show stronger revenue numbers, even if demand for the iPhone is weaker.
Except many probably already have a gazzilion of chargers around the house. Or jusst some USB to plug the cable in. For the last 3 or 4 iPhones I had I did not even take the charger and the earbuds out of the box. Adds nicely to the resell value.
There may be a JTAG port in between the glued-together battery and screen, but it's not going to be easy for someone who gets access to your phone for 5 minutes to exploit that.
JTAG's the extreme case though: it's not like most existing hacks have involved that level of access. It's been mundane stuff like just going in through the USB interface. If Apple eliminate the USB interface entirely, they're still going to have to make it available by some other means to service/update the device. Which means they'll be adding that software stack to wifi/bluetooth.
Your 2 attack scenarios are: device is in evidence lock up, and can b cracked at will (so a security company probably comes up with a kit for cracking and hooking them up, sells the service to LE) - or what happened with T2, where the software stack just gets exploited.
Since you'll still need all those management interfaces that currently are only on the physical port to be somewhere - well I'd put money on removing the port actually making the device more vulnerable. Briefcase of GPUs to crack wifi and rootkit a phone if you can get on the same network.
My sense is that existing physical access exploits have relied on legacy assumptions that shouldn't exist for wifi/bluetooth - hopefully no-one is building systems that give wifi devices direct memory access, or boot over bluetooth. They'll need some level of management interface, certainly, but that's likely to be something purpose-built and more tightly constrained.
JTAG is very useful to test that this particular iPhone was manufactured correctly, so Apple doesn’t completely disable it. That said, Apple does have a hardware disable that removes the ability to access registers and memory via JTAG. One only has this ability with special development iPhones that have to be obtained illegally, in the US anyway.
....Further incentivizing the fascists to figure out how to either force Apple to give them a wireless backdoor or figure out a wireless backdoor for themselves...
Magnetic force falls off pretty quickly - a phone case can cause enough of a difference to make that force lackluster. Apparently, it seems, enough to put magnets in the case itself to better maintain that force.
Additionally, it looks like the goal is to let your phone be held vertically, while attached only to the magnet. This makes sense for car mounts, where you may want to mount your GPS via magnet and charge it simultaneously.
At the risk of being pedantic (or misremembering college classes), there's more to it than that. First, at the relevant distance scales, the magnets aren't point particles, they have an extent and very close to that surface it should be 1/r. Secondly, magnets are dipoles and at greater distances the two poles cancel out to first order and you have a 1/r^4.
There appear to be a lot of people who use those ring-shaped grip holders (or a Popsocket, which has a similar functionality) that stick to the back of a mobile phone.
It appears you can have either MagSafe or the phone holder, but not both. Does Apple have a solution for this?
Upon further reflection, the magnets might have been a necessary tweak to the AirPower concept. They couldn’t get it working with a large matrix of coils, on which you could lay the phone/watch anywhere. Instead, the combo charging mat shown in today’s presentation will use magnets to force proper placement on the mat.
Being able to dock a device for charging with one hand (very difficult with a cable) is very nice. Wireless is superior to surface contacts because you can mount orient your phone in different directions without needing to account for the cable.
Depends how the magnets work; sometimes these types of things are pretty opinionated about the orientation. I think a “smart connector” approach like the iPad could also be used one-handed, but point taken.
I like products that have less friction, and are easier to deal with. I often find it fiddly to insert the lightning cable into my phone, especially in low light.
It’s not a matter of whether one way is too difficult or not. It’s a matter of whether an alternative has some improvements or not.
Personally, I'm waiting for it to release before jumping to conclusions. It's possible it's weighted so this isn't an issue, or the magnet is just strong enough to hold it in place but make it easy to pick up. Apple's usually pretty decent about providing a nice UX for these kinds of things. But I do agree the watch charger is a weird thing that pretty much requires a stand to feel complete.
Totally! Apple is amazing at getting the tolerances on magnets, hinges, etc just right, but I don’t see how you could get by without a suction cup or something on the bottom of the hockey puck.
A downside to wireless chargers has always been alignment. I always do a double take to make sure my phone is actually charging. Having the magnets guide the phone onto the coils is an improvement, I guess.
Ya. The inconsistency of placement has dramatically reduced the value of the wireless so far. Presumably they have the data to see that people have struggled.
> Why couldn’t we fill in the lightning port and use flush surface contacts, like the MagSafe of yesteryear?
I don't remember MagSafe on macbooks ever being truly flush. It was less deep of a port than USB, sure, but it was still a port.
As for why not, there could be many reasons, but I have a feeling it might have something to do with their waterproof/dustproof rating. That's just a pure speculation on my end though.
Or, more likely, it is simply because swapping the lightning port with a magsafe one would make the phone pretty much impossible to use while charging. But with a lightning port + magsafe wireless charging, you get to have both use cases covered (using while charging with lightning, drop off for an overnight charge on your magsafe charging surface).
MagSafe wasn’t flush, no; but I don’t think this is an inherent requirement. I think it’d be possible to make something flat on both the cable and device side.
> swapping the lightning port with a MagSafe one would make the phone pretty much impossible to use while charging
How so? I used my MacBook in bed while charging with MagSafe all the time. The magnets were fairly strong. With a cable going away from the bottom of the device, I think it’d be perfectly usable.
As far as waterproofing, getting rid of the lightning port seems inevitable, because it allows for better hermetic sealing. A flush set of pins seems great for this goal, surely it’s trivial to avoid shorting something out in the prescience of liquid? (I am not an electrical engineer)
Eventually you will see the lighting port disappear with no way to back up the device locally. 5k cameras in cellphones with no removable storage and no way to locally backup.
It seems...kinda dumb. Instead of plugging in a lightning cable, I can now stick a hockey puck to the back of my phone?
The “safe” in MagSafe came from its “yankability” without sending your device flying. But if my phone is laying on top of a hockey puck...it’s gonna go flying if I trip on the cable.
Why couldn’t we fill in the lightning port and use flush surface contacts, like the MagSafe of yesteryear?
I’m also not sure why my case needs to magnetize to my device, getting rid of the lip around the screen that made it less cringe to lay my phone face down.
Am I missing something? I really don’t understand this feature.
EDIT: did I see an AirPower reboot in there or am I dreaming?