A new patent application by Apple for published on Thursday outlines how two devices could top up each other’s batteries. This would enable users to use one Apple device with a battery charged at 100 percent to provide juice to the one that is at critical levels or drained completely. The ‘Inductive charging between electronic devices’ would also eliminate the need to carry around chargers and cables or to find an outlet and wait for the device to be charged.
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This would be achieved by the inductive coils, which are already used in wireless charging systems to receive a charge. Apple proposes to use the same coils to transmit power to wirelessly charge one device using another.
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The images accompanying the patent have also described the mechanism to do so. An iPhone can be placed on the centre of an iPad’s display with iPhone’s rear charging coil facing the latter’s display to be recharged. An alignment magnet could be used to ensure the correct orientation for optimal charging. Some pictures also suggest that multiple coils can be used in larger devices like notebooks to charge multiple smaller devices at the same time. The application suggests that the same transmission system could be used to charge multiple devices at the same outlet. One device connected to the charger can transmit power to other devices stacked together.
Currently, some of Apple’s products such as the Apple Watch, iPhone 8, and iPhone X support wireless charging but others such as the MacBook and iPad don’t, unfortunately. If Apple intends to introduce the charging system proposed in the application, it would need to change the hardware of its devices drastically. It is unlikely that the wireless charging devices currently sold by Apple were made to transmit power, but we could see something like this in the future.
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This patent application was filed on March 19 and it is a continuation of a similar application from 2015. In October 2015, Apple had filed a patent application which proposed the use of a two-coil inductive charging system for audio and vibratory feedback components. Another application was filed in April 2017 and it spoke about using a Wi-Fi router for wireless charging.
Only time will tell how many of these ideas will actually be commercialized (via AppleInsider).
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Source: USPTO
