Immediately after the third public beta version of Android 15, which brought several interesting new features to the Pixel, we learn some curious information about how the little green robot interprets fast charging. In recent years, we have seen a notable development in the context of the charging speed of batteries built into smartphones, with some devices offering corresponding speeds even beyond 100W of power. And it’s curious to learn that for Android, any charger with at least 7.5W of power output is fast. Indeed, even today, Android provides a threshold of 7.5W to define whether a charge is fast or not. This indication is offered by the operating system at the bottom of the lock screen, each time you charge your smartphone. In these situations you may see the words “Slow Charge”, “Charge” or “Quick Charge”. The discrimination between these three cases is done based on the analysis of the output power. And it is quite anachronistic to see Android interpret so quickly a charge that takes place at 7.5W. Slow charging is best suited when the charger’s output power is less than 5W.
These threshold values are included in the AOSP code, obviously based on Android. Fortunately, an update to these thresholds may be coming soon. In fact, according to what was discovered by Android Authority, Google could update the thresholds, allowing Android to interpret charging as fast as when the charger’s power output rises to at least 20W. The novelty has not yet been introduced, and the hypothesis is that it will arrive with one of the next versions of Android 15, perhaps with the stable expected towards the end of summer. Let us clarify that what has just been said concerns Google’s Pixel devices, given that each manufacturer has always been free to modify these thresholds for a more precise indication of the type of recharge they benefit from.
