Apple has canceled the AirPower product completely, citing difficulty meeting its own standards.
Dan Riccio, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Engineering, said in a statement “After much effort, we’ve concluded AirPower will not achieve our high standards and we have cancelled the project. We apologize to those customers who were looking forward to this launch. We continue to believe that the future is wireless and are committed to push the wireless experience forward”
Back in September 2017, Apple first announced AirPower as a feature of iPhone X and promised to start shipping sometime in 2018. After going silent for almost 18 months finally Apple breaks the silence by saying that they will never sell AirPower because it doesn’t meet their ‘High Standard’.
Apple had promised some interesting features for the AirPower charger, including the ability to charge up to three devices at once (specifically, an Apple Watch, AirPod headphones, and an iPhone). According to reports, Apple had used many coils (somewhere near 20 to 25 coils) in their wireless charging pad, so that you could charge your device by placing anywhere in the pad. It should be mentioned that a normal wireless charger has 1-3 coils in the pad.
Since then, there have been numerous reports about engineering challenges and overheating issues (specifically related to the multi-coil design) during the product’s development. Apple hardware engineering team tried to implement those feature but the thermal issue makes it impossible to make such a product.