EU law confirms — Apple can release wireless iPhone

The iPhone 17 Air smartphone is supposed to be the thinnest iPhone ever produced by Apple. To achieve this, the company even considered making it the first phone without ports, but abandoned it due to fears of a conflict with the EU. However, there is evidence that the rejection of USB-C in favor of the completely wireless smartphone would be quite legal.

It was reported by 9to5Mac.

Apple was forced to switch to USB-C

Apple abandoned its proprietary Lightning port and switched to USB-C to comply with EU environmental legislation.

When the legislation was first proposed, the most common port at the time was the dreaded microUSB, but the law was later amended to make USB-C the new standard.

In January 2025, with the deadline approaching for Apple to switch to USB by law, the company was still selling the iPhone SE and iPhone 14, which had Lightning. Shortly before the deadline, the company completely stopped official sales of both models.

Will Apple be able to legally release the wireless iPhone?

It has long been assumed that at some point Apple would abandon wired charging in one or more iPhone models, which was confirmed by Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, who noted that the company considered such a possibility in the iPhone 17 Air.

The company's idea was to make the upcoming product completely portless, abandoning USB-C and relying on wireless charging and cloud storage. Gurman also said that Apple decided to abandon this in order not to cause disputes with the EU by violating their legislation. However, the EU confirms that such smartphones are fully permitted.

The Common Chargers Directive only states that if a device has a charging port, it must be USB-C. However, it does not state that USB-C is mandatory.

In the comment to 9to5Mac, European Commission spokesperson Federica Miccoli said that the portless phone would comply with the law, as such equipment cannot be charged using a wired charger.

Apple has already "donated" the MagSafe standard to the Wireless Power Consortium, where it has become the common Qi2 standard. This means that if the company were to release the wireless smartphone that would only charge using MagSafe, it would not violate EU law and could legally sell it.

It may not be possible to make the appropriate changes for this year's iPhone 17 Air, but a fully wireless iPhone may appear in the coming years.

As a reminder, the well-known analyst reported new rumors about the iPhone 17 line, including cameras. The entire series will receive updated front cameras with a 24-megapixel module, which will be the first time since 2019.

We also wrote that Apple is working on the foldable iPad Pro. The novelty should receive the new Face ID unlocking technology, which will be located under the screen.