iPhone 11 line may have bilateral charging hardware, but turned off in iOS

According to a frequent and reliable iPhone info leaker, the iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro feature the hardware required for wireless charging of something like the AirPods Wireless Charging Case, but it is currently disabled in software.

The story went public on Twitter via Sonny Dickson, who claims to have gotten the information from a reliable source.

Reliable sources are saying iPhone 11 and 11 Pro do include the hardware for bilateral charging, but that it is software disabled. Uncertain whether this was removed prior to final production run.
— Sonny Dickson (@SonnyDickson) September 13, 2019

Bilateral charging, or two-way charging, would allow the iPhone device to charge another device. It works in a fashion similar to charging a device on a wireless charging pad. Samsung's Galaxy line is well known for already utilizing this feature.

Apple analysts had predicted that the new iPhone 11 line would feature bilateral charging, giving users the ability to charge other wireless-charging enabled iPhones, as well as AirPods and the Apple Watch.

Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo had originally made a claim that the iPhone 11 line would include bilateral charging capabilities. Later, he had revised the statement as the system might not meet Apple's requirements, due to inadequate charging efficiency.

18 Comments

gatorguy 13 Years · 24627 comments

About 5 years ago

That was pretty much my guess a few days ago when Apple talked about the much longer run times.

sandor 17 Years · 670 comments

Apple has previously had hardware capabilities that were never utilized in the software/OS.

They have also had hardware capabilities that were later enabled via software updates.

It is difficult to know what will happen with this.

cornchip 11 Years · 1943 comments

Guessing the tracking pucks weren’t ready in time so they’re leaving it off until development wraps up on those.

edit - guess they’re more like coins than pucks

robin huber 22 Years · 4026 comments

cornchip said:

Guessing the tracking pucks weren’t ready in time so they’re leaving it off until development wraps up on those.

edit - guess they’re more like coins than pucks

Cue the jailbreakers.

frantisek 11 Years · 760 comments

Whether it shows potential for ARM Macbook then it is super. Benchmarks against A12X or A13X will be interesting.

Real question what kind of software you can run on it. If Apple has this problem solved, then they would probably made ARM Macbook already.

sandor said:

Apple has previously had hardware capabilities that were never utilized in the software/OS.
They have also had hardware capabilities that were later enabled via software updates.

It is difficult to know what will happen with this.

Exactly. We can hardly know whether they will find functionality not ready for consumers at level Apple expect so may have to wait for software tune up or maybe next iPhone with better HW. But anyway thanks that owners of Pro models will enjoy super prolonged battery time that would probably have not happened otherwise.