Apple is looking into innovative ways to charge iPad accessories, and that includes sending wireless power through the screen.
If the company adopts the idea and expands on it, charging a pair of AirPods would be as simple as putting the case down on an iPhone.
Turning iPad into a wireless charger
Getting power to most devices involves physically plugging them in, though iPhone and many of its accessories support wireless charging.
Apple has been investigating making that easier by turning an iPad into a wireless charging mat. It received a patent on Tuesday to prove that.
It’s entitled Through-Display Wireless Charging, and the patent filing says, in part, “A personal electronic device (e.g., a tablet computer) may be configured to wirelessly charge an accessory (e.g., a stylus) through a display face of the device.”
Turning MacBooks, iPads and iPhones into wireless chargers is also the subject of previous patents. If Apple someday runs with the idea, an iPad will be able to send power to an iPhone, no connecting cables needed.
The concept might be superfluous
Apple’s new patent specifically covers charging accessories through an iPad’s screen, with a stylus used an example. Users of multiple recent iPad models know that these computers can already wirelessly charge the Apple Pencil just by placing the stylus on the edge of the tablet. Which raises questions about whether this through-the-screen idea is necessary.
Apple received the patent on Tuesday but filed for it back in early 2021. Since that time, the company may have decided to drop the idea and stick with the wireless charger on the edge of the computer. So instead of this being a glimpse of the future of iPad, it might simply be a look at a direction Apple tablets didn’t go.
