When the Qi2 wireless charging standard was first announced, the big focus of all manufacturers was to introduce magnets for alignment and additional accessories into more devices. But now, the latest changes to the standard abandon that promise.
At CES 2025, the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) announced the Qi 2.1 standard, the first update above Qi2. The big change was “Qi2 Ready”, an extension of the standard that brings support for “approved combinations” of devices such as smartphones and cases used according to the Qi2 standard. Essentially, it allows Android phones to offload magnets that were supposed to be built into a case, something similar OnePlus did with the OnePlus 13 and magnetic cases.
This directly overturns the original requirements for Qi2, as the WPC had previously made it clear that for a device to say it had “Qi2”, it had to have these magnets built into it.
It’s rather obvious that “Qi2 Ready” came from a desire for Android devices to be able to offer this functionality without placing the magnets inside the device, which comes with design challenges as magnets add weight and thickness. Just because Apple did it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easy for everyone else. But this new option is an official excuse to ditch the built-in magnets all together, and Samsung is now looking positively at these changes.
As it is today, there are cases everywhere that add magnets to all sorts of devices, claiming to add “MagSafe” and Qi2 support. And while this is technically true, it comes with some potential limitations. First, these cases are generally third-party. With “Qi2 Ready”, we will see a lot more offerings from the phone maker itself, and if WPC implements this in third-party cases, it could lead to better implementations of those magnetic cases with better magnet alignment with the Qi coil on the device . Right now, it’s not uncommon to get a third-party case where the magnets aren’t perfectly aligned with the coil, which defeats a large part of the purpose of these magnets. In MagSafe accessories for iPhone, everything is aligned even in third-party cases, so one could see “Qi2 Ready” as the industry standard, but it’s a big “if” for now.
In the long run, “Qi2 Ready” is probably a good thing, but in the short term it means we’ll be waiting for much better support for Android phones that actually support this standard.
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Source: myphone.gr
