The bilateral charging or reverse charging is a feature that lets you wirelessly charge other devices using the iPhone. Rumor mills had predicted this feature, however, Apple didn’t advertise or even mention anything about the bilateral charging feature during the keynote. iFixit has unearthed two battery connectors in the new iPhone and suggests that the extra connector is meant to supply power to a wireless charging coil.
With the phone powered on, we disconnected the lower battery connector and the phone stayed on and charged via the Lightning port, but not over wireless charging. Seems this extra connector is a direct line to the wireless charging coil, which could be an important feature for bilateral charging!
What’s more, when we reconnected the cable, our phone displayed a momentary temperature warning before returning to normal. We suspect it lost contact with an important battery temperature sensor and shut itself down; this sounds a lot like reverse wireless charging heat management feature to us.”
Our Take
Apple Analyst Kuo had predicted that iPhone 11 will lack reverse wireless charging as the charging efficiency is not up to Apple’s standard. Reputed leaker Sonny Dickson says that while Apple might not have formally announced reverse wireless charging feature for the iPhone 11 Pro series, the required hardware is still present inside these phones. He added that Apple has disabled the feature on a software level.
