Anker reveals a serious power-up for your iPhone, Apple Watch and AirPods

(Image credit: Anker)

published 5 September 2023

Anker has updated its range of MagGo wireless chargers for iPhone and other wireless Apple kit, and that means a big speed boost: the new devices support the new Qi2 wireless charging standard, and they're also MagSafe Certified. That latter change means they now deliver much faster charging to your iPhone: the previous MagSafe Compatible kit was limited to 7.5W magnetic wireless charging, but the new ones up that to the full 15W.

Anker's new Qi2 products include a new 27W Power Bank with kickstand and USB-C to deliver wired charging too; a 3-in-1 wireless charging station for iPhone, AirPods and Apple Watch; and a whopping 67W Charging Station with 8-in-1 charging via multiple ports and a 15W wireless charging pad.

What does Qi2 mean for the iPhone?

That's a good question. An ongoing rumour says that the iPhone 15 will support Qi2 charging at the full 15W without requiring MagSafe certification, which would hopefully give you more choice at better prices. It would also make the iPhone 15 one of the very first Qi2-enabled smartphones on the market.

It's good to see Apple at the forefront of wireless charging rather than lagging behind: it added wireless charging in the iPhone 8, roughly five years after wireless charging started appearing in other firms' flagship phones.

Qi2 is the latest generation of the Qi wireless standard, and it's designed to deliver more efficient charging partly through more accurate magnetic attachment and significantly reduced power loss. That efficiency should mean you get much faster charging without reducing the life of the device's battery. It's also been designed with all kinds of accessories in mind, not just phones, so for example Qi2 is made for things like magnetically attaching battery packs and for charging up AR/VR headsets and smart glasses. It's backwards compatible with existing Qi kit.

Anker isn't the only firm to announce Qi2 devices: Mophie has too, and you can expect most of the big names in chargers to launch their own Qi2 kit imminently. The Wireless Power Consortium has nearly 350 member companies including Apple, Samsung, Google, Lenovo and Microsoft so you can expect tons of compatible devices and accessories in the coming months.

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Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).