Yesterday, Apple's competitor Xiaomi introduced new smartphones and a 3-device wireless charger. The design of the charger looked like Apple's failed AirPower charger as presented below. Xiaomi's CEO stated that designing the wireless charging pad was done quickly but it took two years to design the pad to not overheat. This was the problem that Apple reportedly had. Xiaomi overcame this issue and Apple is still at the patent level.  

(Click on image below to greatly enlarge)

Today the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially granted Apple yet another wireless charger system patent simply titled "Wireless Power Systems.

The patent covers a wireless transmitting power system that has a wireless power transmitting device. Embodiments of power transmission coils in the transmitting and receiving devices may include pot core coils, multi-core coils such as figure eight coils having clockwise and counterclockwise windings around respective magnetic cores, solenoids, and other coils.

Apple notes that in some embodiments, a solenoid array may extend under a charging surface in a wireless power transmitting device such as a charging mat. Solenoids in the array may be separated from each other by small gaps. Solenoids may have rectangular outlines, hexagonal outlines, or other shapes. Clusters of solenoids that are overlapped by wireless power receiving coils may be driven together to produce wireless power signals. Adjacent solenoids can be driven in-phase or, in some configurations, can be drive out-of-phase with each other.

Apple's patent FIG. 1 below is a schematic diagram of an illustrative wireless power system; FIGS. 7 and 8 are perspective views of portions of illustrative coil arrays that extend across planar charging surfaces in wireless power transmitting devices in accordance with embodiments.

To get into the finer details, review Apple's granted patent 10,965,162.