Why the HTC 10 doesn't come with wireless charging

The launch of the HTC 10 was pretty predictable, thanks to a mixture of leakers and HTC itself spilling the beans about every element of this new phone.

One thing I'd hoped was wrong was the lack of wireless charging, but sadly that didn't come to pass. I've always assumed that HTC never puts the non-corded powering method on its phones as it makes its handsets out of mostly metal.

But in my HTC briefing, I was told by Darren Sng, head of global product marketing for HTC that this wasn't the case:

"[The issues with] metal can be overcome, but that's not the reason we haven't done it [on the HTC 10]. Wireless charging is convenient, but we believe faster charging is better."

Need for speed

Qualcomm has offered some proof of concept ideas in the past that could overcome the issue of metal blocking the wireless charging signal, so it seems that HTC could bring wireless charging to its phone should it want to.

Sng went on to say that the technology hasn't realized the speeds that HTC would like, but when it manages to get to that point then 'we'll move on that' - so basically, when wireless charging is fast enough then it'll bring it to the market.

You could argue that this decision should be placed in the hands of the consumer, but adding in wireless charging to the HTC 10 would likely have seen it become even thicker, which would be an unnecessary design compromise.

That said, Samsung has offered both wireless charging standards in its Galaxy S phones for the last two years, and claims to have managed wireless speeds that are faster than some company's walled charger methods - so perhaps it's high time HTC joined the party too.

Watch our HTC 10 hands on video: