Samsung
Samsung’s already slow charging speeds have once again been caught falling short of people’s expectations. This time it’s the wireless charging of the Galaxy S23 series, which is slower than older Galaxy S22 phones, according to new tests from PhoneArena. The site compared wireless charging for all three models – the base, Plus and Ultra S22s and S23 – and concluded that “All three new members of the Galaxy S23 series charge much slower than the Galaxy S22 series according to our testing.”
The worst model to come out of the test is the flagship Galaxy S23 Ultra. The S23 Ultra and S22 Ultra have 5,000mAh batteries and 15W wireless charging, but even with the official chargers, the new phone came out much slower. The S22 Ultra took 1 hour and 58 minutes to fully charge from the wireless charger, while the S23 took 33 percent longer at 2 hours and 37 minutes. It’s not just a full charge that adds an extra 39 minutes, the phone also shows an overall drop in charging speed that was never reflected in Samsung’s spec sheet.
The changes of the base and Plus model from year to year are less relevant, as they also had a larger battery capacity, so naturally the new models take longer to charge. For the record, the two cheaper S23 models added 200 mAh of battery capacity and 15 minutes of wireless charging time. That’s not the same massive decline that the S23 Ultra experienced.
Some people like to speculate that fast charging can hurt battery life, but at this point we have years of practical evidence in the market proving that those concerns are unfounded. Companies like Oppo/OnePlus and Xiaomi have been providing fast charging solutions for several years now, and you won’t find a group of people claiming that fast charging has destroyed their battery life. Fast charging calls for heat management, so companies manage the heat! It is no problem to measure the battery temperature and act accordingly. For wireless charging, some chargers have a fan to help dissipate heat while charging. Presumably the S23 Ultra has some heat dissipation issues leading to slow charging speeds.
There’s nothing “fast” about 15W wireless chargers for Samsung to have issues with. The fastest commercial wireless options are 50W. Samsung – and Apple and Google – are all way behind the state-of-the-art charging technology you typically get from Chinese manufacturers. That’s a shame because fast charging, especially the high-speed wired options, is changing the way you use a phone. You don’t have to charge a phone overnight if you can quickly charge it in a few minutes.
