Apple has come up with a pretty cool idea for wirelessly charging its devices; we're just not sure it'll ever come to fruition.
If you could think of one thing you'd change about the iPhone, what would it be? We're betting it'd have an ever-lasting battery life. A recently published Apple patent application for "inductive charging between electronic devices" brings us one step closer to that reality. The patent describes a solution that leverages existing wireless charging technology to transfer power from one device to another.
It details ways for two devices, such as a tablet and a smartphone, to recharge each other's batteries. For instance, a depleted iPhone battery could be juiced up by touching an iPad with a full battery. This would be handy for those of you who possess both devices and find that one of them is running out of battery while you're on the go. It essentially eliminates the need to carry a charger and cable.
The application is all about using inductive coils to transmit power as well as to receive. Images included suggest an iPhone could be placed on the center of an iPad's display in order to recharge. Other images also show notebooks - MacBooks - with potential coils on the trackpad and on each side, allowing it to charge multiple smaller mobile devices. You could even stack all your devices to charge them.
By stacking them, only one would be needed to connect to a wall charger, as the connected device could transmit power to all others. The thing is, Apple has a large number of patents and applications with the USPTO, and none of them are guaranteed to be used by the company.