iPhone X, 8 and 8 Plus were released in the Apple press event on September 12, 2017. One of the highlights is that the three new iPhones are all equipped with Qi wireless charging. Material of the mobiles’ back cover is glass instead of metal, which made the application of wireless charging feasible in iPhone for the first time.

The pity is that wireless charger is not included in packages of all the three new iPhones. Apple announced to release its own wireless charger AirPower in the first quarter of 2018. That is to say, you are on your own to buy an extra wireless charger if you want to experience the wireless charging function now.

Wireless charger Apple AirPower

Question is, how can you buy a wireless charger that is compatible with the new iPhones? The wireless charging technology applied to the iPhone X, iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus has turned out to be based on Qi standard. So besides the wireless charger brands recommended by Apple, other Qi-complied wireless charger brands and products with much higher cost performance can be considerable options for you as well.

And is there a simple way to identify if a brand is qualified in Qi standard wireless charger products? The answer is to check membership of that brand in Qi WPC(Wireless Power Consortium). Take a China brand Nillkin for example, visit “www.wirelesspowerconsortium.com”, click “Our members”, and search for “Nillkin”, then the result shows.

Nillkin-member of WPC-Wireless Power Consortium

Let’s dig deeper, with wireless charging technology adopted in the new iPhones, will it lead a trend of wireless charging in whole smart phone industry ? We published a similar topic about this prior to the release of iPhone 8. Whereas, there are opposite views in the eyes of some “experts”. They capture a fact that efficiency of inductive wireless charging is currently inferior to cable charging, and point out that it made them impossible to use mobiles while charging like they enjoyed with cable charging.

However, who are saying these may never have gone deep into the true experience of wireless charging. The essence of wireless charger is similar to products like Bluetooth speaker and wireless headphones. Wireless charging is not to replace cable charging, just as the Bluetooth speaker was not meant to replace wired speaker. And we have to admit that almost every technology is accompanied with some sorts of disadvantages at its beginning stage, it’s no exception for wireless charging. But it’s biased to directly deny the prospect of wireless charger.

Wireless charger in car VS cable charging
Wireles charging-Put to charge

In fact, with the development of fast wireless charging technology, its efficiency and popularity have already been enhanced a lot. Up to now, there are over 760 products using Qi wireless charging, included in 90 smart phones, about 80 car models and supported by over 200 member companies in 20 countries based on statistics from WPC.

And comparing with conventional cable charging, the wireless charging indeed has some advantages:

  • Easy of use: Getting rid of cables, it eliminates the hassle of carrying cables and mismatching of different cable plug types with various mobile brand
  • Convenience: And there’s no doubt about convenience of the feature: “put to charge, pick to use”, instead of “plug to charge, unplug to use”.
  • Safety: Avoiding the possibility of electric leakage and insecure data transmission in cable charging.
  • Multi-device charging: Wireless charging has achieved the function of charging multiple devices at the same time, ended the disorder and tangle of all kinds of cables.
  • Extensive application scenarios: The feature of wireless charger, made it incredibly suitable for being an universal charging facility that can be implemented to every corner of life at home, office, hotel, restaurant and car, etc. Starbucks, IKEA and Audi are among the famous brands that have utilized this technology.
Wireless charger application scenarios in Starbucks, Ikea, Audi

Apple said long time ago that “the future belongs to wireless”. And let’s never underestimate the terrific brand effect of iPhone. Under the background of wireless charging included in the new iPhones, other smart phone brands like Huawei, Xiaomi are unwilling to lag behind. So we can expect a promising future of wireless charger as it’s getting the focus of attention in consumer electronics field. A strong rise of demand for wireless charger is on the way.

Wireless charger-Google trends