Ryan Haines / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Apple is reportedly considering changing its MagSafe strategy.
- This could potentially mean some future iPhones will ship without magnetic charging built in.
- Less competition around magnetic charging would likely be bad for Qi2 adoption, but the Qi2 standard is independent and not directly influenced by Apple.
Android’s been slow to catch onto magnetic wireless charging, with Google only first implementing it in last year’s Pixel 10 series and segment leader Samsung still not offering full Qi2 compatibility in any device. A new rumor about Apple’s MagSafe could be bad news for Qi2’s future prospects on Android.
As spotted by MacRumors, leaker Instant Digital has claimed on Weibo that there’s internal debate at Apple as to whether MagSafe should be a standard feature in future iPhones. Apple changing tack and pulling MagSafe from at least some of its iPhones would probably mean fewer Android models shipping with MagSafe-compatible Qi2 hardware, too.
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It’s impossible to know how serious the purported internal discussions about MagSafe’s future are, assuming they’re happening at all. The standard feature phrasing is ambiguous, too: Are features that ship in iPhone Pro models but not base-model iPhones standard? (That we’re working from a machine-translated version of Instant Digital’s post doesn’t make things any clearer, either.)
MacRumors points another recent rumor (again from Instant Digital) that Apple is eyeing potential year-over-year downgrades in the base-model iPhone 18 to cut manufacturing costs. It’s feasible that built-in MagSafe could be one of those downgrades; Apple could point its non-Pro customers to MagSafe-enabling cases, instead.
It could also be that a future potential iPhone 18e skips MagSafe (the 17e has it; the 16e does not). It feels less likely that Apple would give up on MagSafe altogether, given how hard it’s leaned into that accessory ecosystem in recent years.
Qi2 is its own standard independent of Apple, so MagSafe doesn’t have any bearing on Qi2 directly. At the same time, any new iPhone model shipping without MagSafe built in would give Android manufacturers a good excuse not to offer Qi2 in their similarly priced phones. In any case, at this stage, it’s probably a little early to worry about it.
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