Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra charges strangely slowly
The difference between 25W and 45W is hard to spot
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One of the more eye-catching upgrades offered on theSamsung Galaxy S22 UltraandGalaxy S22 Plusis 45W charging, which sounds like a big boost on the 25W of theSamsung Galaxy S21range. But if you were hoping that would mean almost twice as fast charging then you’re seemingly going to be out of luck.
GSMArenahas tested the phones with three chargers – a 25WSamsungcharger, a 45W Samsung charger, and a 65W third-party charger, and found that the charging speeds are roughly the same with all of them.
A full charge of the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra with the 25W charger for example took 64 minutes, and with the 45W one it took 59 minutes. So the move to 45W saved just 5 minutes. The 65W charger split the difference at 62 minutes.
The difference when charging the Samsung Galaxy S22 Plus was even smaller, with the 25W charger taking 62 minutes, while the 45W one took 61 minutes – so just a 1-minute difference.
Partial charges tell a similar story. Juice up the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra for 30 minutes from a flat battery and it will reach 61% with a 25W charger according to these tests, while the 45W charger actually performed marginally worse at 60%, with the 65W one managing 65%. The Samsung Galaxy S22 Plus hit 62% in the same time with the 25W charger and 64% with the 45W one.
So in general it seems that using a 45W charger will power these phones up faster, but only by a few minutes at most. That’s all the more disappointing when you consider that plenty of rival phones offer much higher power charging than Samsung even claimed to, with 80W on theOnePlus 10 Proand 120W from theXiaomi 12 Profor example.
It’s not entirely clear why Samsung’s 45W charging is seemingly underperforming so much, or whether perhaps a software update could improve matters, but it’s disappointing to see.
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Still, given that you don’t get a charger in the box, this does mean that there’s no need to rush out and buy a 45W one, when a 25W one will seemingly do the job almost as well.
Analysis: the opposite of Apple
This is in some ways the opposite of what we found with theiPhone 13 Pro Max, as while Samsung seems to be advertising higher power charging than its phones can really achieve,Appleseemingly undersold the charging potential of its flagships.
Apple advertises 20W charging for every model in theiPhone 13range, buttests have shownthat with a higher power charger, you can get 23W out of theiPhone 13 Proand 27W out of the iPhone 13 Pro Max.
That ultimately is still in line with what you’ll seemingly get from the Samsung Galaxy S22 range, but promising less and delivering more is always better than the opposite.
James is a freelance phones, tablets and wearables writer and sub-editor at TechRadar. He has a love for everything ‘smart’, from watches to lights, and can often be found arguing with AI assistants or drowning in the latest apps. James also contributes to 3G.co.uk, 4G.co.uk and 5G.co.uk and has written for T3, Digital Camera World, Clarity Media and others, with work on the web, in print and on TV.
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