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The new Galaxy Watch 7 and Galaxy Watch Ultra are Samsung’s most powerful and versatile smartwatches ever. They’ve gotten a lot of improvements, but they’ve also lost something along the way. Given their many upgrades and improvements, you might be surprised to learn that the Galaxy Watch 7 and Watch Ultra don’t support Wireless PowerShare.
The latter is one of the most unique features developed by Samsung for smartphone and wearable device users. Wireless PowerShare is a technology that allows users to turn their Galaxy smartphones into wireless power banks to charge other devices, such as Galaxy Watches, earbuds, and even Galaxy phones.
PowerShare is far from the most efficient way to charge devices, but in theory it’s something that can come in handy in certain situations. However, Samsung says the new Galaxy Watch 7 and Galaxy Watch Ultra have had to ditch Wireless PowerShare due to other health tracking improvements.
Redesigned BioActive sensor leads to the demise of Wireless PowerShare
Samsung’s new Galaxy Watches feature a redesigned BioActive sensor that improves the accuracy of health and fitness tracking and expands the range of metrics the new watches can track.
This advancement came at a cost. Samsung explains through a support page (via @JordyV27) published today that both new Galaxy Watches had to drop Wireless PowerShare support due to the redesigned BioActive sensor shape and back glass.
Their shape was designed to increase the level of accuracy when using health and fitness tracking, but it also conflicts with Wireless PowerShare and prevents it from working. As a result, Samsung has decided to completely drop Wireless PowerShare support for new smartwatches.
While the Wireless PowerShare feature on a smartwatch sounds convenient, in practice, for most users, it’s a quality of life feature that they’ve never used. It can be useful in some situations where you might forget your charger and find yourself in a sticky situation, but those situations are rare.
So while it’s sad to see this feature removed, the fact that the Galaxy Watch 7 and Watch Ultra don’t support Wireless PowerShare won’t be a huge loss for most smartwatch users. And if what we’ve gained is more accurate and versatile health and fitness tracking, it’s probably a tradeoff worth making.
The story continues after the how-to video below…
Interestingly, it was in 2022 that Samsung showed signs of not considering Wireless PowerShare when designing its smartwatches. The Galaxy Watch 5 Pro did support Wireless PowerShare, but it seemed like a last-minute idea, as the shape of the band prevented the feature from working. Watch 5 Pro users had to remove the band before they could use PowerShare, and needless to say, few people were willing to accept this just for the sake of a relatively inefficient method of charging batteries.