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The embarrassing state of wireless charging on Android

By Victor Hristov

Published: Oct 30, 2024, 6:52 AM

12comments

Android Editorials

This article may contain personal views and opinion from the author.

The embarrassing state of wireless charging on Android

Wireless charging was supposed to be the standard of the future and the technology that gives us portless phones.

But a decade after the first wireless charging phones were introduced, wireless charging is in a really bad, fragmented shape. Especially if you talk about Android phones.

Pixel 9 series gets "fast wireless charging" or...

it's just one more Android wireless charging fiasco

Another great feature of the Pixel Stand Gen2? It does not exist in the real world

The most recent example of how wireless charging is fragmented at best and missing at worst is the Pixel 9 series.

Google says the Pixel 9 supports "fast wireless charging" on the official specs page. In the small print, we see Google promises 23W wireless charging speeds for the Pixel 9 Pro XL, decent speeds indeed.

All of that would be really cool IF it was actually true and if it worked. However, to get those 23W speeds, you need to use the Pixel Stand 2nd Gen charger and here is when we run into a problem:

Pixel Stand 2nd Gen is not available anywhere. In fact, it seems to be quietly discontinued across the globe.

Yikes!

And did Google explain why this hugely important product was discontinued? Not a word.

Is a new one coming soon? Nobody knows.

You can still use wireless charging with your Pixel 9 series phones, but you need a third-party charger and that would give you 12W speeds maximum, way slower.

To me, this shows a complete disrespect for users. There was not an apology, not an explanation, nothing.

Furthermore, the specs page still says that the Pixel 9 supports "fast wireless charging", while the truth is that it doesn't. It never has.

Qi2 Magnetic wireless charging on Android or...

Just empty promises?

This was supposed to be the game-changing development: Qi2!

This magic standard requires modern Android phones to come with magnets, so they can snap to your wireless charger and ensure optimal efficiency, similar to MagSafe.

It was announced nearly two years ago, on January 12th, 2023, and back then that's what we wrote:

iPhones are getting USB-C ports while Android is officially getting MagSafe... sort of!

The WPC (Wireless Power Consortium), the body behind the Qi wireless charging standard, has unveiled a second revision that hopes to bring all the current major wireless standards under one umbrella. As per the WPC, Qi2 is expected to be introduced later this year (in 2023), with Qi2 chargers and phones reportedly expected just in time for the 2023 Holiday shopping craze.

Hey, don't blame us! We were not the only ones hoping for great things. TheVerge also wrote back then that it was hopeful the next Pixel series (then, the Pixel 8 series) would get the technology. Many others were also hopeful.

However, there is nothing quite like empty promises and that's exactly what Qi2 seems to be all about, at least when it comes to phones that actually support it.

Admittedly, we already have many Qi2 wireless chargers and they work perfectly fine with one fruit company, but... no support on Android phones yet!

Samsung fast wireless charging is... not fast at all

One company that is at least capable of making a wireless charger and selliing it is Samsung.

However, it's hard to be very excited about wireless charging on Samsung Galaxy phones. For starters, the wireless charging speed is 15 watts at best, and last year, Samsung actually downgraded its phones, only promising 10W wireless charging.

Don't get too excited about the future either: the Galaxy S25 series may or may not support the Qi2 standard.

Well, hopefully the Galaxy S26 series finally will. Or the ones further on. Hey, I'm sure our kids will have phones with fast wireless charging, okay!

At least OnePlus should have fast wireless charging...

Right? Right?!

Hey, mainstream Android phones don't have fast wireless charging, that much is clear.

But what about OnePlus? After all, the big upgrade for the OnePlus 12 was FAST WIRELESS charging!

That was one of the few new features, compared to the previous OnePlus 11 model.

There is no way the OnePlus 12 will have ANY problems with that, right?

Sorry to break the bad news once again, but the OnePlus 12 does not really supprot fast wireless charging. It does in a theoretic, imaginable OnePlus world, but not in the real world.

On paper, the OnePlus 12 supports 50W wireless charging with AirVOOC technology, but... you guessed it, it requires a special OnePlus wireless charger to use it.

Can you guess if that charger is available on the OnePlus store in the United States? Of course it's not. It's vaporware.

I checked a few other countries just in case, and nope, it's not available anywhere.

Conclusion

So out of all major Android phones, it turns out that their promises for fast wireless charging are completely false.

The phones might theoretically support fast speeds, but usually they require a special charger and those chargers only exist in fantasy land, but not the real world.

It's not all Android phones, we could find a few fast wireless chargers by companies like Xiaomi in some markets, but those were expensive and very hard to find.

Things might change next year, in 2025, but... they might also very well stay the same.

We know that at least one phone, the OnePlus 13, is finally expected to pick up that long-awaited Qi2 standard. There is light at the end of the tunnel, but right now, we're still very much in the dark.

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Victor, a seasoned mobile technology expert, has spent over a decade at PhoneArena, exploring the depths of mobile photography and reviewing hundreds of smartphones across Android and iOS ecosystems. His passion for technology, coupled with his extensive knowledge of smartphone cameras and battery life, has positioned him as a leading voice in the mobile tech industry.