Summary
- Smartphones now support rapid charging up to 240W, but Android still labels 7.5W slow chargers as fast.
- Android 15 may raise fast charging threshold to 20W to prevent misleading “charging rapidly” messages.
- Samsung and Xiaomi have already redefined fast charging on their devices to accurately display charging speeds.
Fast charging in smartphones has improved by leaps and bounds in recent years. We have gone from devices pulling a maximum of 20-30W power to phones that can top up their cells at blazing-fast speeds of 240W. This improvement also extends to wireless charging, with phones like the OnePlus 12 supporting 50W wireless charging speeds. Despite such gains, your Android phone only needs 7.5W of juice to show it is “fast charging.” Thankfully, Google could fix this issue with Android 15 later this year.
If you plug in a power brick that provides up to 5W of power, your Android phone will consider it a “slow” charger and display a “charging slowly” message on the lock screen.
For power ranging between 5W and 7.5W, a “charging” message will show up. If the power output exceeds 7.5W, Android will consider it a fast charger, with a “charging rapidly” message appearing on the lock screen. This creates an issue as your Pixel 8 Pro can falsely lead you to believe it is “charging rapidly” despite being plugged into a slow 10W charger.
With Android 15, though, Google will seemingly tweak the OS’s health HAL to tweak the definition of fast charging. In a report for Android Authority, Android expert Mishaal Rahman notes that Google plans to bump this threshold to 20W. The change is not yet live in the latest Android 15 beta but should go into effect when the OS is ready for its public debut.
Samsung has already redefined “fast charging” on its phones
Android manufacturers like Samsung and Xiaomi have already tweaked the definition of fast charging on their phones. The Xiaomi 14 Ultra shows “charging” when plugged into a 10W power adapter, while “fast charging” appears when you use a 20W charger. And when you use the company’s bundled 67W or 120W charging brick, the phone shows “charging rapidly.”
Similarly, a “Super fast charging” message on Samsung phones will only show up on the lock screen when you use a 25W charger. On newer devices with 45W fast charging support, like the Galaxy S24 Ultra, “Super fast charging 2.0” will appear with a 45W charging brick.
Still, Google fixing the definition of fast charging with Android 15 should benefit the entire ecosystem, especially Pixel users.
