Will you soon be able to charge the AirPods with the iPhone 12?

The new iPhone 12 models seem to have a hidden function that allows you to charge small accessories wirelessly. The function is currently inactive, but in the future you may be able to charge the latest AirPods.

Charging iPhone 12 AirPods

This suggests to application that Apple has filed with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The application states that the 2020 iPhone models (the iPhone 12) work with a new charging function that can charge accessories wirelessly. This would happen with a frequency of 360 kHz.

This is remarkable, because Apple hasn’t released anything about this cool feature yet. There are currently no accessories that work with it. “The only accessory that can currently be charged by iPhones is a future Apple accessory,” the document reads.

Apple Insider Mark Gurman speculates it could be new AirPods with MagSafe support. That would mean that you would later click the case with AirPods onto the back of the iPhone 12, after which it will be charged wirelessly. The new AirPods (third generation) and AirPods Pro (second generation) are expected in 2021.

If the two-way wireless charging on the iPhone 12 only works with the as yet unannounced AirPods, this also explains why Apple hasn’t said anything about this yet.

Two-way wireless charging

With the iPhone 11 series, Apple already had plans to make the phones suitable for two-sided wireless charging. Parts for such a charging system had already been found in the Pro models, but it was not finished yet. Apple would have stopped it because charging was not efficient enough.