Much like the megapixel race which saw smartphone manufacturers make the absolute megapixel count a marketing tactic, we've seen a similar rat race for charging speeds over the past few years. Many OEMs, particularly Chinese, have now made charging speeds their preferred marketing gimmick.
The question remains, though, does that make any difference to the end user? Do you, as a customer, consider charging speeds to be a dealbreaker? There's a lot that can drive the decision to spend money on a smartphone. For many, charging speeds might not even be a consideration.
Samsung never got sucked into this charging speed rat race. It was fine with the flagship Galaxy smartphones offering 15W fast charging. It later introduced 25W ‘super fast charging' in 2019. We tested just how fast Samsung's 25W super fast charging technology is and found a noticeable improvement.
The company kicked things up a notch with the Galaxy Note 10+ as it added support for 45W charging. It never shipped this charger in the box so customers who wanted the extra speed had to spend extra money. It wasn't much speed to begin with. Tests showed that the time gained by using the 45W charger on the Galaxy Note 10+ compared to the 25W was just about 8 minutes.
While the Galaxy S20 Ultra supported 45W charging, the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra didn't. This suggested that not many customers were willing to spend extra money to get the 45W due to the negligible speed difference. So Samsung saw no reason to retain support. Sure enough, the Galaxy S21 Ultra charging speed also maxed out at 25W.
Samsung did this at a time when its Chinese competitors were showing off 100W charging speeds and trying to make that a talking point. Be that as it may, Samsung doesn't seem to be having any problem selling smartphones that don't offer these outrageous speeds.
For me personally, of all the things that could sway my decision when buying a phone, be it the display technology, chipset, RAM, storage, camera setup, things that actually impact the user experience in a major way, charging speeds won't matter beyond a point. Is that the same for you? Vote below and share your thoughts with us in the comments.
