Huawei’s expected to launch the Mate 20 smartphone on October 16th. It’ll be powered by the company’s new Kirin 980 processor, and it may have at least three cameras, arranged in a square-shaped pattern for some reason.

But one of the most surprising things about the phone? Not only will you probably be able to charge the Mate 20 wirelessly… you may be able to use the phone itself as a wireless charger.

WinFuture has obtained some images that allegedly show the phone charging Huawei’s upcoming Freebuds 2 Pro wireless earbuds.

Here’s the idea: put the earbuds in their charging case, and then put the case on the back of the phone and the earbuds will draw power from your phone’s battery.

Of course, that’s not the only way to charge the earbuds. You can also place them on a Qi-enabled wireless charging pad or plug in a USB Type-C cable. But if your earbuds die while you’re on the go, it’s nice to have the option of giving them a little extra life just by placing them on your phone… assuming your phone has battery capacity to spare.

Honestly, I’m not sure how often I would use a feature like this, but it’s nice to have. It sort of gives me the same feeling I had when I first discovered that you could connect two phones with a USB Type-C cable and use one phone to charge the other. I’ve never done it since, but it still felt like magic the first time I saw it work.

The Freebuds 2 Pro are expected to run for up to three hours on a charge or offer up to 15 hours of standby time, and there’s a battery in the case that should let you recharge the earbuds a few times before the case needs to charge.

According to Winfuture, the earbuds use bone conduction to detect your voice and distinguish it from other speakers, which could help when using voice commands. And the Bluetooth earbuds support high resolution audio with bitrates up to 560 Kbps.

We should find out more about the Freebuds 2 Pro when the Huawei Mate 20 is unveiled in October.

Support Liliputing

Liliputing's primary sources of revenue are advertising and affiliate links (if you click the "Shop" button at the top of the page and buy something on Amazon, for example, we'll get a small commission).

But there are several ways you can support the site directly even if you're using an ad blocker* and hate online shopping.

Contribute to our Patreon campaign

or...

Contribute via PayPal

* If you are using an ad blocker like uBlock Origin and seeing a pop-up message at the bottom of the screen, we have a guide that may help you disable it.

Subscribe to Liliputing via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 9,545 other subscribers

3 replies on “Huawei’s next smartphone may also be a wireless charger (for earbuds)”

  1. Wireless charging is great, because ~30-40% of transferred power goes out the window. Now, when you are connected to mains, that’s okay (except for the environment, but meh). But when you need to charge 500mAh case from an undersized battery in the phone, even if you start at 100%, you’ll end up using about 700mAh. So now you are down to 75% on the phone. But you don’t do this when the phone is at 100%. You do it during the day. So likely from 60-70% down to 35-45%. I don’t think I’d use this… How about you use a pair of wired earbuds instead? Oh, you need a headphone jack for that? Surely the wireless charging circuit for this takes up more space than a headphone jack, right? Right?!

    1. They might allow for the phone to charge, while acting as a charge pad for the wireless ear buds. Apple airpods charge from a battery in their case. That case needs it’s own cable and usb port. The article says that the Huawei case has a battery which means they could be charged at night on top of the phone (as it charges). This would be easier than the current Apple method of plugging the case into a separate usb port (with its own cable).

      1. The marketing picture is horrible because it should show the phone charging and the ear buds charging at the same time from a single wireless pad.
        When you travel with the phone, all you need is one cable and one usb wall adapter.

Comments are closed.