Why Doesn’t the Apple Watch Have Wireless Charging? Because It Probably Wouldn’t Work Very Well.

The Apple Watch will not allow for wireless charging. To charge the device, you’ve got to connect it to a charging cable.

Sure, it is a very nice charging cable. A magnetic connector automatically aligns a circular charging plate with the watch, so you don’t have to fiddle with plugging anything in, as you do with many other smartwatches on the market. I tried charging the watch a few times during a short demo, and I found the process to be pretty quick and hassle free. You do have to remove the watch from your wrist to charge it, though, which would be annoying if you had to charge it often. Apple has not said how long the device’s battery will last between charges.

But why doesn’t the watch charge wirelessly, just by placing it on some kind of charging pad, perhaps even while you’re wearing it?

One issue is that there’s some confusion about what “wireless” charging means. The Apple Watch uses magnetic induction charging, which is the same technology that early reports said it would use. Technically, this means no electric wire connects the watch to the charger. Instead, an electric current is passed between a set of magnetic coils in the charging plate and the watch.

Induction charging is often referred to as “wireless” charging, and other wireless charging technologies, like the Qi charging system used by a variety of devices that feature wireless charging, use this same technology. Those devices use a kind of charging plate or mat; you place your phone on the mat and it begins to charge.

Why couldn’t Apple use the same system for the watch? One theory concerns the watch’s shape.

Because the watch has a band, it wouldn’t necessarily lie flat on a mat when you set it down. And if it didn’t lie flat, it wouldn’t start charging. That illustrates the main problem with induction wireless charging; to work well, it needs very close range and precise alignment between the device and the charger, which often restricts how you can move the device while it’s being charged. So, in theory, the advantage of a wireless charging mat is that you could just throw your watch on your nightstand and have it start charging. But in reality, induction charging might be too finicky to allow for such careless placement.

As my colleague Molly Wood wrote this year, some other wireless charging technologies allow for more flexibility in how you arrange your devices. And as Nick Bilton reported a few weeks ago, start-ups are working on advanced systems that let you charge your phone or watch while you’re several feet away from a charger. But none of these look likely to take off soon because the technologies aren’t too practical and no solution has achieved mass acceptance.

Which means that for the foreseeable future, you can expect to be stuck with lots of ways to charge your gadgets. Soon, Apple will have three different kinds of charging systems — one cord for the Mac, one for the iPhone and iPad, and one for the Watch. Many competing companies use standard USB connectors, but even those have begun to come in different shapes. Samsung’s new phones and tablets, for instance, carry the USB Micro B charging port, which is only partially compatible with older Micro USB cables. The old cable can fit into the new gadgets, but you won’t get full data transfer speed. (The new cable can’t fit into your old gadgets.) And just about every smartwatch and fitness band I’ve used has had its own unique charging adapter.

So what I’m saying is, there’s no hope. Get used to carrying a lot of charging cables around. And have fun plugging things in. You’ll be doing a lot of it.