Remember that time Samsung introduced fast wireless charging to its phones back in 2015? At the time, Samsung was one of the few manufacturers taking wireless charging seriously, and every Galaxy flagship since the Galaxy S6 edge+ and Galaxy Note 5 has had fast wireless charging support. And, with the Galaxy S10, Samsung is set to introduce reverse wireless charging, but while fast wireless charging was useful and better than what others were offering, the company seems to be bringing reverse wireless charging just so it can show consumers the Galaxy S10 can match Huawei's latest phones when it comes to the list of bonus features.
Huawei is perhaps Samsung's biggest upcoming competitor, so I can understand the Korean giant trying to make sure its next flagship offers similar features as the latest Huawei flagship. But I can't help but feel that Samsung could instead have focused resources on, say, faster wired charging. The latest info suggests the Galaxy S10 will have the usual Quick Charge 2.0-equivalent fast charging technology, while Chinese OEMs have marched forward with newer fast charging specifications, some of them custom-made to charge a device from 0 to 50 percent in an impressively short amount of time.
In fact, Huawei claims that its Mate 20 Pro can go from 0 to 70 percent charge in just 30 minutes. But that's not what Samsung is looking to match with the Galaxy S10 based on the info we have right now. Instead, we'll get the ability to charge other phones wirelessly using the Galaxy S10. How useful will that be? Well, it could come in handy for that friend of yours who has a flagship phone with wireless charging support and is dire need of a charge, but it's probably not going to be useful enough considering the Galaxy S10 won't have giant batteries on any but the Plus model (and, frankly, 4,000 mAh isn't that huge, either).
The one proper use case I can think of is charging your smartwatch, but that would be bonus functionality since there aren't going to be many occasions where you simply have to get your smartwatch running. I'm still hoping we do get faster wired charging. Remember, even if the charging speeds don't increase, newer implementations are also better with heat and power efficiency. Samsung hasn't upgraded its fast charging tech in the last five years, and to think the tenth anniversary Galaxy S flagship will give us reverse wireless charging instead of faster wired charging is going to be quite disappointing to me and no doubt to many others as well.
What do you think? Is reverse wireless charging a feature you'd like on your phone?
