Powermats At Starbucks To Be Updated To Support Apple’s iPhones

Apple’s new iPhones will finally support wireless charging, although we should note that they support the Qi wireless charging standard. Given that there are a couple of different standards in existence, it does seem to indicate that there will be some accessories that won’t work with the iPhones.

For example Powermat uses PMA which on paper would suggest that you can’t charge your iPhone using the company’s products, but that isn’t 100% true. In fact the company has recently announced that they will be pushing an update to its Powermat chargers installed in Starbucks in which it will be able to support the new iPhone 8, 8 Plus, and the iPhone X.

Speaking to SlashGear, Powermat Chief Technical Officer Itay Sherman said that this is possible due to the design of Powermat where, “We’ve designed the magnetic part to be as generic as possible to cover all standards if possible … If there’s a new standard, a new variant of the standard —you have PMA, you have Qi, you have Samsung’s Wireless Fast Charging —we can download new software to our points and support them.”

Unfortunately it seems that this isn’t applicable for all of Powermat’s products, meaning that if you were hoping your Powermat charger at home would be similarly update, you probably shouldn’t count on that to happen. No word on when the software will be pushed out to the various Starbucks branches, but if you do plan on buying the new iPhones, then you can expect to be able to charge them at Starbucks outlets in the future.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Apple, Cellphones
Tags: iPhone, iPhone 8, iPhone X, starbucks, wireless charging