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Qi2 gave up on its biggest promise, but here’s one reason that might be a good thing

Ben Schoon | Jan 12 2025 - 9:00 am PT

When Qi2 was announced two years ago, the big focus was on bringing magnets for alignment and additional accessories to more devices. But, now, the latest changes to the standard are giving up on that promise.

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At CES 2025, the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) announced the Qi 2.1 standard, the first update on top of Qi2. The big change was “Qi2 Ready,” an extension to the standard which brings support for “approved combinations” of devices such as smartphones and cases to be used under the Qi2 standard. Essentially, it lets Android phones offload the magnets that were supposed to be built-in to a case, similar to what OnePlus did with its OnePlus 13 and magnetic cases.

This directly walks back the original requirements for Qi2, as the WPC previously made it clear that for a device to say it had “Qi2,” it had to have those magnets built in. That was even reiterated later on after confusion on the matter was spread for months.

It’s rather obvious that “Qi2 Ready” came from the desire for Android devices to be able to offer this functionality without putting the magnets inside of the device, which comes with design challenges as the magnets increase weight and thickness. Just because Apple did it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easy for everyone else to. But this new option, an official excuse to forgo built-in magnets, will almost surely guarantee that a lot more device makers will take the easy route. That’s exactly what Samsung appears to be doing.

And as sad as that is to see, there is one reason why this might a good thing in the long run.

As it stands today, there are cases everywhere that add magnets to all sorts of devices, claiming to add “MagSafe” and Qi2 support. And while that’s technically true, it comes with some potentially hiccups. For one, those cases are generally third-party. With “Qi2 Ready,” we’ll be seeing a lot more first-party offerings. And if the WPC applies this to third-party cases, it could lead to better implementations of these magnetic cases with better magnet alignment with the Qi coil in the device. Right now, it’s not uncommon to get a third-party case where the magnets are not perfectly aligned with the coil, which defeats a big part of the purpose of these magnets. On MagSafe accessories for iPhone, everything is aligned even on third-party cases, so one could look at “Qi2 Ready” as the industry standard version of that, but it’s a big “if” for the time being.

In the long run, “Qi2 Ready” is probably a good thing, but in the short term, it means we’ll be waiting a whole lot longer for Android phones that truly support this standard.

What do you think?

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