The Samsung Galaxy Note 20 series will not charge at 45W, like the Galaxy S20 and even the Galaxy Note 10 series did.
Samsung debuted the faster 45W charging standard last year for its flagship smartphones, even though it bundled a 25W charger in the box. The higher-end models (the Note 10+, S20+, S20 Ultra) supported it, but not the base-model flagship.
Now, with the Galaxy Note 20 series, it won’t be charging at 45W at all. It’ll only charge at 25W.
Why did Samsung ditch the 45W charging standard?
While we don’t know for sure, Samsung likely ditched 45W because the chargers were to expensive, and didn’t offer much faster charging over 25W.
Now that might sound confusing, since 45W is almost twice as fast as 25W. But in tests, the 45W charger was able to get to 80% a lot faster, but that last 20% slowed it down considerably to where it was only a couple of minutes faster than 25W chargers.
And that’s likely why Samsung decided to remove it on the Galaxy Note 20 series. It was just not feasible to put in the money to do the faster charging, when it wasn’t really a big difference from 25W. Not to mention the fact that most customers were likely not buying its chargers and battery packs that did 45W charging either.
25W charging is still plenty fast
Sure, there are other companies out there doing much faster charging, like OnePlus with its Warp Charge 30T. Or Vivo and OPPO with its 120W charging. But Samsung’s fast charging standard is better.
Simply because it is safer.
You see OnePlus, OPPO, Vivo and other companies are all using USB-A to deliver these fast charging standards. Which isn’t exactly built for that, and can get very hot, very quickly. Samsung, on the other hand, is using USB-C for this fast charging standard. Which is built for it, and has a lot more safety checks included.
While we all want to be able to charge our phone as fast as possible, safety should be a big concern. We’ve all seen what happened with the Galaxy Note 7 four years ago, and how it was not too safe. So kudos to Samsung for taking the right approach here and giving us a safe fast charging standard. Instead of just going as fast as possible because they could.
Charging the Galaxy Note 20 and Note 20 Ultra at 25W might sound like a downgrade, but it’s one we can live with. How many of you actually bought Samsung’s 45W USB-C charger anyways?