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Samsung vs Apple, Huawei and OnePlus: whose phones charge the fastest?
Fast charging can save a phone that is chock-full of specs and power draw and is as important a metric as battery life itself. This is why we are taking our charging tests, which are done with whichever stock brick and cable come in the retail box, and applying them to the battery capacity to determine who's the boss of fast charging standards at the moment. We already did rank the phones that discharge those milliamp-hours of battery capacity the slowest, and now is the time to do the opposite metric - the fastest charging ones, per mAh/min.
Virtually all good phones these days support fast charging, and some are going to crazy speeds and amperages to pump those batteries full of electrons. Fast chargers that come with your phone do one and the same thing - they top up your handset quicker than those puny bricks of yesteryear that took many hours to do the same thing.
Every manufacturer, however, calls their system differently, despite that it all boils down to that. Bear in mind that Apple doesn't supply the fast charger in the iPhone 8, 8 Plus or iPhone X boxes, so you have to get it as an extra. Also, devices like the Xiaomi Mi 8 may support Qualcomm's latest Quick Charge 4+, but such chargers aren't readily available, and the difference in speeds would be negligible compared to what the stock 3.0 brick is able to achieve anyway.
It's confusing to know the differences between Samsung's Adaptive Fast Charge, Apple's Fast Charge, the OnePlus DashCharge, Huawei's SuperCharge, Qualcomm's Quick Charge, Motorola's Turbo Charge, Oppo's VOOC and so on. So, whose standard wins?
As you can see from our ranking, Huawei's SuperCharge takes the cake, followed by the OnePlus Dash Charge, which is very similar to the sister company Oppo's VOOC in performance. Samsung's Adaptive Fast Charge is also high up there, with the Note 9's 4000mAh unit getting fully pumped in less than two hours, while Moto's Turbo Charge gets an honorable standing, too.
Apple and Sony come last in terms of charging speeds. That's not because their gear can't be fast-charged, but rather as they provide puny chargers in their retail boxes, and you have to splurge extra for the privilege to top your iPhone or Xperia as quickly as phones from other major brands.
Given Huawei's top 44mAh/min. performance, we'd be very curious to measure the charging speeds of the upcoming Mate 20 Pro, which is tipped to arrive with a huge 4200 mAh pack but also 40W charging power. The 22W SuperCharge is now fast enough, but what if Huawei supercharges it even more?
