In May 2020, the NFC Forum introduced NFC Wireless Charging, a standard for offering wireless charging over Near-Field Communication (NFC). This specification offers up to 1W of power transfer over a distance of 2cm. So, if there are two devices supporting this protocol, one device can send up to 1W of power to another device wirelessly using NFC.
This technology can be very helpful in offering wireless charging over NFC in small devices that feature NFC for data transfer but don’t have enough space to house dedicated wireless charging solutions, such as wireless earbuds, location trackers, and styluses. Sadly, we haven’t seen any devices offering this feature, and that’s most probably because no platform supports it. Well, that could change very soon.
According to a new report from Mishaal Rahman on Android Authority, the system application in Android 15 Beta 1p that handles tasks related to NFC includes a class called ‘NfcCharging‘. It suggests that Google is working on adding support for wireless charging over NFC in Android 15.
If Google plans to offer this feature with the stable version of Android 15, and Samsung enables it on its devices, it will open a whole new world of possibilities. For instance, a Galaxy phone or tablet will be able to charge Galaxy Buds or Galaxy SmartTag over NFC. Unfortunately, the current Galaxy SmartTag models don’t have a rechargeable battery. So, Samsung cannot offer this feature on existing SmartTag models.
However, this feature could allow Galaxy smartphones/tablets without wireless charging to charge Galaxy Buds or Galaxy Watches. When Samsung launches a SmartTag with a rechargeable battery, this technology will enable those Galaxy smartphones/tablets to charge that SmartTag as well.
