Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Watch7 and Galaxy Watch Ultra yesterday at its Unpacked event. They are both missing the Wireless PowerShare feature, as it turns out. This allowed you to wirelessly charge past Galaxy Watches on the back of your phone. But now you can’t do that anymore with these new watches.
The culprit is be the new BioActive sensor array that Samsung developed for its latest generation smartwatches, which has a new design that made Samsung change the shape of the back glass on the new watches. This change increased the distance between the internal wireless charging coil of the watch and the wireless charger, and it’s too big of a distance for the feature to keep working with your phone.
On the flip side, Samsung explains that the new sensor array features improved accuracy over previous models, allowing you to “assess health-related data points that were not previously supported as well as take more reliable measurements during prolonged or specialized exercises”.
If you’re wondering whether you can charge the Watch7 and Watch Ultra on a traditional wireless charging pad, the answer is yes but due to the aforementioned increased distance between the coil and the glass, charging will be slow and heat-generating. Thus, Samsung suggests you only use the wireless charger that it includes in the box for best results.