Shouldn’t a 45W charger be significantly faster than a 25W one?
Charging your smartphone sure seems like it should be straightforward, right? Everything else being equal, the more power you can throw at the problem, the faster your handset should charge — a device supporting 150W input had sure better charge a hell of a lot faster than one with dinky old 10W support. At least, that all sounds perfectly logical, but some tests with the brand-new Samsung Galaxy S22 phones are not showing the improved speeds we’d expect from their 45W charging support.
Both the Galaxy S22+ and the S22 Ultra advertise support for 45W charging — Samsung explicitly advises “for best results, use 45W Power Adapter with Galaxy S22 Ultra and S22+ and 25W Power Adapter for Galaxy S22.” But as GSM Arena shared in some recent tests — and we’ve been able to verify with our own units — it really doesn’t look like using a more powerful charger makes much of a difference at all in terms of ultimate charge times.
The tests looked at charging performance with both the S22+ and S22 Ultra paired with one of three chargers: a Samsung 25W adapter, a Samsung 45W adapter, and a 65W USB-PD adapter (though lacking PPS). Upon trying out those combinations in setups that both looked at how long it takes to fully charge the phones, as well as how much of a charge they can amass in 30 minutes, the results show a stunningly even playing field: a difference of just 5% between the best and worst performers in the quick-charge test, and a difference of only 5 minutes at reaching a full charge.
Considering that Samsung’s 45W adapter should be nearly twice as powerful as its 25W offering, we’d sure expect to see a bigger improvement than just shaving a mere 5 minutes off the S22 Ultra’s full-charge time. This is far from the first time that Samsung users have had cause to be confused and disappointed over the mismatch between claims of high-speed support and what we got in terms of real-world performance, but it’s nonetheless still upsetting.
We’ve reached out to Samsung to see if it has any comment on this charging behavior, and will update this post if we get any response.
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