this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2024
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Android

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TL;DR

  • Android 15 is preparing to tweak the threshold that determines whether a charger is seen as fast, from a measly 7.5W to a more reasonable 20W.
  • The operating system has long considered any charging speeds of at least 7.5W to be fast, which is far, far below what actual fast chargers can deliver nowadays.
  • The change isn’t live yet in the latest Android 15 beta, though, so chargers that deliver 7.5W of power will still be seen as fast on Pixels.
all 34 comments
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[–] [email protected] 99 points 4 months ago (4 children)

Why not just show the charging W on the screen instead of 'fast'.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

Many custom roms do that

[–] [email protected] 51 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Because the less tech savvy people will be confused when the battery starts getting full and charging speed tapers off which will lead to complaints about their 20w charger only providing 3w of power.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 4 months ago

Then give a setting to enable it in the developer settings.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Android is catering to the general public. The average user would easily understand fast, slow and normal. 20w, 68w, 5w not so much. But, I agree not having to use apps or 3rd party cables just to see the charging watts would be great. Even a Dev flag to enable the feature would be cool.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

You could just show it as a percentage of max its trying to draw be default and show actual watts under a developer toggle

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Fast, normal, and slow are not clear either, I think. We see here that the "fast" term needs to evolve because it probably feels pretty slow now. Wattages are pretty clear reference points when users come to understand what they mean, especially over time.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

Expecting the average user to understand numbers is a high expectation

[–] [email protected] 22 points 4 months ago (2 children)

That's ridiculous. People have been buying light bulbs based on Watts for around a century and understand that higher W means brighter and more power.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 months ago

Bad example. People are still confused with light bulbs. That's why they still say the equivalent wattage to incandescent bulbs.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago

You make it sound like a joke but that's literally all it takes here.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Seriously. This thought occurred to me the other day when I plugged my power bank into a car's charging port to check the wattage and wondered "why the fuck can't my phone just do this by default?" Do we actually not trust people to understand higher number = faster?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I think they meant they plugged the battery bank into the car's phone charger?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

How does that tell them the wattage output of the power bank

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

I assume they meant check the wattage of the car charger output. some powerbanks have displays now and can show you it's input or output.

.. All phones also have displays and should show you the same thing but don't.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Maybe they have a wattage reader on their charger/power bank/car?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 months ago (1 children)

below 5W, then the charger is considered “slow,” and the message “charging slowly” is shown on the lock screen. If the power is above 7.5W, then it’s considered “fast,” and the “charging rapidly” message is shown instead. If the power is between 5 and 7.5W, then the charger is seen as “normal,” and the lock screen simply says the phone is “charging.”

Seems to be a purely cosmetic change. I was wondering if the OS has any different behavior when charging quickly (like being more aggressive with running background processes, and running updates/backups) but the article didn't say anything about that.

If my phone was only charging at 5 or 6W I'd want to know the charger is garage. That might not even be enough to use the phone without losing battery. What they really need is to rename "slow" to "very slow", and then 5W to 7.5W could be considered the new "slow". The intent being that "very slow" is problematically slow (maybe the OS scheduler could pretend the phone is not charging). And "slow" charging would just be for mild inconvenience.

If only the phone could just tell me the actual number of watts it's charging at lol. Even if it's rounded and averaged.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

iirc, there are currently 3 charging states: Fast, Slow, and Low Power Charger, which already covers your cases, so I would argue just moving the bar between low and high up is probably enough.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

then I wonder what the cutoff is for "low power charger" because I don't think I've ever seen that, it could probably stand to be increased a bit

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I've only ever seen it when running a game or when a chromebook got plugged into a 5w charger, so I'm guessing it's when the OS does the math and decides it can't rev down enough to make headway while booted up.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

It's also possible to have voltage issues on a device with multi-cell batteries.

My laptop charges on a type-C charger, but only if it can get 15+ volts. If it's a 12V charger, that isn't enough to push a charge into its battery. It will run on 12V but won't charge at all, even if it's off.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I'm curious as to what effect this might have on people who will now be charging at "slow" speeds, is all it going to do is trigger different Power saver settings?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Its purely a visual change to signal charging speeds to our eyes. There are no changes to power savings yet.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago