The iPhone 15 is the first smartphone on the market to support Qi2 wireless charging, and more details about what exactly this means are now available. The Wireless Power Consortium announced today that the first Qi2 magnetic chargers are coming “in time for the holiday season” this year.
Qi2 is coming soon, starting with iPhone 15
We’ve covered Qi2 quite a bit over the past year. The gist of the situation is that Qi2 is the second iteration of the Qi wireless charging standard, and it’s all about magnets. Similar to Apple’s proprietary MagSafe charging system, Qi2 unlocks up to 15W wireless charging – plus all the other benefits of magnetic charging. That includes things like better efficiency and easier alignment.
The iPhone 15 will be the first smartphone to support Qi2 accessories, and Apple played a key role in developing the new standard. The easiest way to explain it is that Qi2 is basically the “generic” version of MagSafe.
As it stands today, the only way to unlock full 15W wireless charging on the iPhone 15 is to use a MagSafe-certified accessory. Using non-MagSafe wireless charging maxes out at 7.5W wireless charging. Once the first Qi2 accessories are available, however, iPhone 15 users will be able to charge at 15W using any Qi2-certified accessory.
Today’s news is that the first Qi2 accessories from the likes of Belkin, Mophie, and Anker are in the final stages of certification. According to the Wireless Power Consortium, they’ll be available “in time for the holiday season.” In total, there are “over 100 devices” in testing or in the queue for certification testing, the WPC says.
Ideally, this means that iPhone 15 users will soon have more ways to unlock magnetic wireless charging at full 15W speeds. Plus, those accessories should be cheaper than MagSafe-certified accessories. Time will tell whether that actually pans out, but again, that’s the ideal outcome of the Qi2 launch.
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