At Xiaomi’s latest flagship Mi 11 Ultra event on Monday, a range of accessories were unveiled by the company, including a new wireless charging pad capable of simultaneously charging three devices without precise placement, a device that is similar to the canceled AirPower charger introduced by Apple.
In 2017, the Cupertino tech giant, Apple, introduced its AirPower multi-device wireless charger, promised it’d be available in 2018, however, the company failed to meet that goal, and ultimately canceled the project in 2019. Now Xiaomi seems to deliver Apple’s promise and is expected to make the wireless charger available soon in China for under $100.
According to Xiaomi, this wireless charging pad features wireless power of up to 20W per device and includes 19 coils, allowing users to place and charge up to three devices that support Qi wireless charging.
Overall, this sort of device is exactly what Apple had promised but scrapped its plans for AirPower after failing to adequately deal with issues including heat dissipation that come when you pack that many charging coils into a tight space. Xiaomi says that it spent two years creating its charger in order to overcome those issues.
Unlike most other clones of the AirPower charger out there, Xiaomi’s wireless charging pad is more affordable, selling for about ¥599 (US$91). However, it is unknown if the charging pad will be released to markets outside of China.
XIAOMI IS NOT THE FIRST COMPANY TO CLONE THE APPLE AIRPOWER
The Chinese company is not the first company to make its own clone of the Apple AirPower. In 2019, Nomad released an 18-coil wireless charger that can charge any three devices with no specific placement, the Base Station Pro, but as noted by The Verge’s Chaim Gartenberg, “one of the downsides was that aside from the iPhone, the pad only provided 5W of charging.”
At the event, alongside a new wireless charging pad, Xiaomi unveiled the Mi 11 Pro powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 processor and a 5,000mAh battery, which includes 67W wireless charging as opposed to the Mi 10 Ultra and Huawei’s Mate 40 Pro, which have previously had the fastest wireless charging with 50W.
