Samsung finally fixed the one thing that made wireless charging pointless

Samsung has kept wireless charging on its flagship phones at 15W for years. While other brands have been way ahead on this for a long time, Samsung did nothing. And if you used wireless charging regularly, you felt that.

It's always the same thing: you put your phone on the wireless charger, go do something else, come back half an hour later, and it's charged maybe 10% more than when you left it. It can be incredibly annoying, especially when compared to wired charging, which is extremely fast if you have a phone that supports 45W charging.

To be fair, Samsung probably had its reasons. The Note 7 situation — where phones were catching fire due to battery issues — clearly left a mark on how cautious the company became with anything battery-related.

And more recently, Samsung has been taking a page out of Apple's book. The focus isn't on throwing big spec upgrades at you every year but on the user experience. So a jump in charging speed probably wasn't high on the priority list, even if faster wireless charging would have improved the user experience too.

The Galaxy S26 Ultra finally changes this. Samsung bumped wireless charging to 25W, the same speed as the wired charging that many of its flagship phones, including the expensive Galaxy Z Fold 7, are still stuck at. It makes a huge difference, and one you notice in day-to-day use.

In around half an hour, the Galaxy S26 Ultra can charge anywhere up to 40-45% with a 25W wireless charger. An hour of charging takes it up to almost 80%. A full charge takes around an hour and twenty minutes. It's not as fast as a wired 25W connection, but it's close, and it's certainly a far cry from the painfully slow 15W.

It's not that 25W is incredibly fast. Chinese brands have offered much higher wireless charging speeds for years, and major brands like Apple and Google have been offering 20W+ wireless charging for around 2-3 years now.

But better late than never, and it's an excellent move on Samsung's part. I was actually more focused on finally getting faster than 45W wired charging with the Galaxy S26 Ultra, but now I realize 25W wireless charging is fast enough that I won't be reaching for the wire all that often.

That said, Samsung does need to pick up the pace when it comes to both wired and wireless charging upgrades. Only the Galaxy S26 Ultra gets 25W wireless charging. The S26+ gets 20W, which is a weird middle ground, and the S26 is still stuck with 15W.

Apple doesn't discriminate: the regular iPhone 17 may have a smaller battery than a Galaxy S25 or S26, but it still gets 25W wireless charging. It also supports 40W wired charging, so Samsung has some catching up to do, and hopefully it will do the needful with the Galaxy S27 lineup.