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Apple Says BMW Wireless Chargers Really Are Messing With iPhone 15s (theverge.com) 28

Posted by msmash from the stranger-things dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Users have been reporting that their iPhone 15's NFC chips were failing after using BMW's in-car wireless charging, but until now, Apple hasn't addressed the complaints. That seems to have changed as MacRumors reported this week that an Apple internal memo to third-party repair providers says a software update later this year should prevent a "small number" of in-car wireless chargers from "temporarily" disabling iPhone 15 NFC chips.

Apple reportedly says that until the fix comes out, anyone who experiences this should not use the wireless charger in their car. Users have been complaining about BMW wireless chargers breaking Apple Pay and the BMW digital key feature in posts on Reddit, Apple's Support community, and MacRumors' own forums.
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Apple Says BMW Wireless Chargers Really Are Messing With iPhone 15s More

Apple Says BMW Wireless Chargers Really Are Messing With iPhone 15s

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  • Yeah. Play it like a software change could repair a Hardware damage.

    • But why is Apple's NFC implementation susceptible to hardware damage from an external wireless charger? You'd think it would be designed to not self-destruct?

      • NFC uses teeny tiny amounts of power, wireless charging uses much more.

        Radio circuitry is delicate.

        • I wonder if it's the overall heat from the wireless charger that gets the phone hot enough to just cook the NFC circuit? I would guess that Apple knew people would be using wireless chargers, and designed the NFC circuit to be able to accommodate the power that wireless chargers put out.

          • Apple's fairly competent, but certainly not infallible, and they've had their share of embarrassing hardware failures in the past. And they've had trouble with radios in iPhones in particular.

    • Yeah. Play it like a software change could repair a Hardware damage.

      Normally I would agree, but in this case there is a non-zero chance a software update could remedy the problem. First, Apple most likely has consulted with BMW to see how their wireless chargers work. Second, it might be something in how those chargers push out their current that the phone wasn't designed to handle or modulate (or whatever). Third, Apple saying a software fix should correct the issue and how to currently mitigate the issue seems like a software fix will work.

      Only time will tell.

      • Do we actually know it's the wireless charger vs. the wireless Carplay interface itself?

        • Do we actually know it's the wireless charger vs. the wireless Carplay interface itself?

          Unlikely to be wireless CarPlay damaging/disabling an NFC chip. CarPlay uses Bluetooth and WiFi, not NFC.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Bahbus ( 1180627 )

        First, Apple most likely has consulted with BMW to see how their wireless chargers work.

        Unlikely as Apple doesn't like consulting with other companies. And since Apple is pushing some sort of "fix" on their side, and BMW is not...well...it should be obvious.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        NFC used 13.56MHz. Qi wireless charging starts on 140kHz, but the charger varies the frequency to find the best match with the receiver, between 105kHz and 205kHz.

        I wonder if it's a question of some kind of harmonic that induces significant current in the NFC antenna. At 135.6kHz there would be weak harmonics at 13.56MHz, although the frequency match doesn't have to be exact for it to be a problem.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Yeah. Play it like a software change could repair a Hardware damage.

      There's no evidence of hardware damage. All that happens is the NFC chip is disabled temporarily. So something the BMW charger is doing is somehow disrupting the NFC chip.

      Could be anything - maybe the BMW charger is causing spikes that are causing the chip to enter a protection mode and shut down briefly to protect itself.

      Either way eventually it resets and everything works again.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        Yeah. Play it like a software change could repair a Hardware damage.

        There's no evidence of hardware damage. All that happens is the NFC chip is disabled temporarily. So something the BMW charger is doing is somehow disrupting the NFC chip.

        Could be anything - maybe the BMW charger is causing spikes that are causing the chip to enter a protection mode and shut down briefly to protect itself.

        Either way eventually it resets and everything works again.

        Knowing how chips are designed these days, I suspect that the NFC communication chip on the motherboard probably has a dedicated microcontroller in it with its own firmware. And there's probably a bug in that firmware that causes it to crash when it gets some sufficiently malformed packet, requiring a full power cycle of the device to reset it. The fix could be anything from an actual fix for the microcontroller's firmware to a watchdog that resets the chip when it gets into a wedged state.

    • Because it is a software bug?

  • "Apple reportedly says that until the fix comes out, anyone who experiences this should not use the wireless charger in their car."

    So, unplug the wireless charger?

    • I don't have a BMW, but in my car I have to place the phone in a little "tray" to use the car's wireless charger. If I don't put it in the tray, it doesn't charge. I assume this is what they mean here - "Don't put it in the wireless charging tray."

  • corrected heading (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bloodhawk ( 813939 ) on Monday October 30, 2023 @05:38PM (#63967178)
    "A flaw in the iPhone 15 causes the iPhone NFC chip to become disabled when interacting with BMW wireless charging." No BMW charging is not messing with the iPhone.

    • If it's only a problem with BMW chargers (or whatever supplier did it, since it mentioned the Supra as well, which was a BMW partnership), it means that either the iPhones, the charging module, or both are out of spec - or that the spec itself is flawed.

      Interoperability is a pain, especially since a surprising number of specifications have contradictions that have both sides of an exchange being "in spec" but still not working. This is why companies will often have to do interoperability testing instead of

      • If wirelessly interacting with the environment around you can result in your hardware becoming disabled then it is without question a problem with your software/hardware not the environment.

        • This response concerns me. Instead of the conversation being "huh, I wonder what the failure mode really was, what was missed in the design process? Was it a spec issue? Faulty assumptions?Manufacturing? How can we (presumably as engineers) avoid such a failure in the future?" we devolve into "haha company X is an idiot, they deserve all the blame for this!"

          Wouldn't it be better to use the forum to improve ourselves and our society, instead of just denigrating everyone?

      • Literally zero Android devices with faster QI charging capabilities are running into this problem, and they've started releasing NFC capable phones that are more unrestricted in what they do. Massive fail.

      • it means that either the iPhones, the charging module, or both are out of spec

        No, it means the iPhone is out of spec. A device which accepts RF transmissions needs to protect itself against unexpected and out of spec RF transmissions.

        This isn't a case of something not working, it's a case of something ceasing to work. BMW's spec shouldn't come into question here.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by necro81 ( 917438 )

          A device which accepts RF transmissions needs to protect itself against unexpected and out of spec RF transmissions.

          Within limits. There is no suite of testing or standards compliance that insists on infinite immunity. No one expects their device to function normally or escape damage if, for instance, they happen to walk past a 10-kW transmitter.

          (I am not saying that that is what's happening in this case: we really don't have enough information. I'm saying that, in general, every test of EMC immunit

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Some users are reporting that their devices overheat, or that the NFC permanently stops working. These reports are not confirmed, but if accurate then it's hard to see how a software patch could improve things.

        If it's just interference causing the NFC interface to latch up until watchdog timeout or something then software could potentially sort it out.

  • Or does mini wireless chargers also have the same problem?

  • FWIW, one of the iPhones in the house, a 14plus, had to be repaired under warranty because the NFC failed. Started depleting the battery like it was running Crysis, and tossing an occasional ApplePay error. ApplePay was not used, and the phone was not wirelessly charged. They said the repair was swapping all the innards.

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