Android 15 may soon let you charge your devices wirelessly via NFC

Google’s I/O developer conference is about a month away. And along with Gemini, Gemma and the Pixel 8A of course, the company is also likely to reveal the beta version of Android 15 for the first time. One of the biggest features expected to be included in the latest iteration of the world’s most popular smartphone operating system, is support for the NFC Wireless Charging (WLC) standard. Here’s all you need to know.

What NFC wireless charging is and what its advantages are

Now, when it comes to wireless charging, the Qi standard is the most widely accepted. The Qi and Qi2 standards have been around for a while now, and are found in several devices we use today. One of the most prominent ones, of course, is our smartphones. However, many smaller devices do not support the standard, bearing in mind how they are incapable of accommodating a coil big enough to be able to receive power.

ALSO READ: Qi2 brings MagSafe’s best feature to non-Apple wireless chargers

Well, this is where NFC Wireless Charging comes in. Announced nearly four years ago, the wireless charging standard was developed by the same industry association that developed Near-Field Communication (NFC), the underlying technology for contactless payments.

The advantage of the WLC charging standard is that it requires significantly smaller antennas than Qi wireless charging. These antennas can be smaller than 1cm in size, which means they can easily be packed into smaller devices such as TWS earbuds, styluses, smartwatches, and tracker tags. What’s more, these antennas can also be used for NFC data transfers, adding to their utility even more.

However, despite having been around for nearly four years now, NFC Wireless Charging has yet to make its way to many of the gadgets we use today, including our phones.

One possible, and major reason for this is a lack of support from major operating systems such as Android. Well, that may be all set to change, however. The Android 15 update, as per an Android Authority report, may include support for NFC Wireless Charging, which could also lead to a slew of WLC-enabled accessories to make their way to the shelves soon.

NFC Wireless Charging support in Android 15

As mentioned in the aforementioned report, Google has made significant changes to the Android 15 beta 1’s NFC stack. The app on the system that handles everything NFC on a phone, now gets a class called “NfcCharging,” which starts and stops the same, reads the charging info while going about the same, and more.

ALSO READ: What is Qi wireless charging?

Interestingly, this isn’t Google’s first attempt to add WLC charging support to its smartphone operating system. The company had earlier taken a crack at adding WLC support in late 2021, but never went through with it, for reasons unknown.

However, it seems to be taking another crack at it, bearing in mind the significant advantages it offers over charging standards such as Qi and Qi2.  Once WLC support is integrated into the Android operating system, charging should become uniform across smartphones, as well as smaller devices such as TWS earbuds, styluses, smartwatches, and tracker tags.