Apple made some pretty big headlines a few months ago when it announced that the iPhone would adopt wireless charging and that it was developing a charging pad that could charge multiple devices, to be called AirPower, but it’s not the only company working on wireless charging tech — Samsung may be working on developing the tech, too.
That’s according to a patent leak which was picked up by Patently Mobile, and that describes a “Dual Wireless Charging Pad” that will presumably work much like the AirPower charging pad — offering the ability to charge multiple devices at a time. That’s different from today’s wireless charging technology, which only allows for one device to be charged at a time.
According to the patent, the charging pad will make use of both inductive and resonate wireless charging — both of which work with the Qi standard of wireless charging. Not only that, but the pad could use inductive charging for one device and resonate charging for another, according to the patent filing. What that means is that the charging pad could be used to charge any Qi-compatible device — not just Samsung’s devices. That’s good news for those looking for a decent charging pad for more than one device.
By the looks of it, the charging pad will feature a puck-shaped design similar to its previous charging pads, only boasting enough room to charge two phones or to charge a phone and a watch.
We don’t yet know when Samsung plans on launching the wireless charging pad, and because we only have a patent it’s entirely possible that it won’t ever be released. Still, if we had to speculate, it would make sense for Samsung to launch it in an effort to compete with Apple, and it would make sense for it to launch alongside the Samsung Galaxy S9.
Many expect wireless charging to become much more prominent in mobile technology over the next few years, and while Android manufacturers have been taking advantage of it for some time now, nothing puts a technology into consumer consciousness like adoption by Apple. Of course, we’re still hoping that wireless charging tech gets better, such as what we’ve seen from companies like Energous.
