The image at the top of this post pretty perfectly captures the absurdity of Android’s “Charging rapidly” claim when you plug your device in. As you can see from the picture, my Pixel 8 Pro is plugged in at 81% and yet with a charger that is pushing enough juice to pop-up the “Charging rapidly” words, it’ll still take 41 minutes to reach 100%. In what world is a 19% charge considered “rapid” if it’ll take 41 minutes?
Those words show up on Android devices like my Pixel 8 Pro because Google has set absurdly low rates for chargers to send to your devices in order to trigger them. In Android, if a charger is plugged in that delivers 7.5W of juice, those words show up. If a charger delivers between 5W and 7.5W, it’ll just say “Charging.” And finally, if your charger can’t even deliver 5W of power, it’ll say “Charging slowly.”
7.5W is sooooooo slow by today’s standards and has been for years. There’s a reason this phone is “Charging rapidly” and will take 41 minutes to charge its final 19% and it isn’t only because Google is trying to protect the battery. It’s because the charger is slow. Batteries are huge and the system still thinks that slow chargers are fast. Google should try to be more accurate with this information.
Spotted by Mishaal Rahman, Android 15 Beta 3 has a change that could adjust the charging speed limit required before showing that your phone is charging quickly. Google has apparently made a tweak that would require a charger to produce 20W speeds in order to say “Charging rapidly.” They’ve made the change in one config file, but still need to in another before it’ll show to you and I. I’d imagine Google will do that as Android 15 goes fully stable over the coming weeks.
It should be noted that Google has allowed other phone makers to change these limits, we just don’t know if they have. For Google’s Pixel phones, this low 7.5W limit has remained for some time, probably from its original introduction.
Why is that a problem? It’s incredibly misleading to users. The Pixel 8 Pro is capable of charging at 30W wired speeds, but it’ll show the same message if you plug-in to your friends 7.5W charger while likely delivering dramatically different charge times. A change to 20W would at least come close to telling you that your Pixel 8 Pro should charge to its rated 50% in 30 minutes claim. It allows for better planning, piece of mind, etc.
The other issue here is that as a phone like the Pixel 8 Pro charges to higher percentages and the charging rate slows, Google should adjust the words on the screen. If they are tapering the charge speed to preserve battery life, it should change the wording depending on the power being delivered. Only looking at the available power from a charger is pretty stupid. The OS should deliver messages depending on current charging speeds, not capabilities, at least in my opinion.