The fast-charging wars are over. Now it’s time to fix USB-C

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You don’t have to be an old timer to remember when charging power was once a major differential for the best smartphones . The long march to 40W charging quickly spiraled into a spec war that spawned countless rival standards: HyperCharge, SuperVOOC, SuperCharge, Samsung AFC, Apple 2.4A. and Qualcomm’s Quick Charge as options for brands unable to build their own. It was a mess, and we’ve been dealing with the fallout ever since when trying to buy fast-charging accessories for all our gadgets.

Eventually, the universal USB Power Delivery specification caught up in raw power in the USB-C era, but this was further complicated by branching enhancements such as EDR for laptops and PPS for low-power devices. It’s taken years for the standard to reach capabilities that match what rival proprietary standards have long offered. Thankfully, we’re now at the point where the power wars are over; it’s time to consolidate around the sensible universal option.

If you look at the past two or three generations of the fastest-charging phones, power levels have plateaued. While you’ll still find the odd marketing claim breaching the 100W barrier, 60-80W of real deliverable power appears to be the most that we can throw at our compact smartphone batteries. And that’s plenty fast, too. Even the largest 7,000 mAh phone batteries can be fully charged in about 40 minutes.

There are stragglers, of course. Samsung’s Galaxy S26 Ultra has only recently closed the gap on the industry’s fastest, but the popular iPhone and Pixel series remain some way behind. This is especially true when we look outside the top-of-the-range flagship — baseline models are often notably slower.

Still, peel back the numbers, and there’s something more important at play. The fastest charging phones are increasingly less dependent on their proprietary protocols to achieve fast charging times and power (which is seldom sustained for more than a few minutes anyway). We’re now at the point where universal standards have caught the proprietary models and offer broader accessory compatibility to boot.

The Xiaomi 17 Ultra is an extreme example, promising up to 90W over the everyday USB Power Delivery PPS specification. Likewise, the OnePlus 15 and OPPO Find X9 Ultra can hit above 40W via PPS as well, with only a minor impact on full charge times. The key factor is that the average power draw during fast charging is often well below 40W, regardless of whether you use SuperVOOC or Power Delivery.

Unfortunately, it’s too early to celebrate just yet. The mess that is the USB charging landscape means that even consolidating around Power Delivery remains a challenge. Today, even if two phones can receive more than 50W under this universal specification, it doesn’t mean consumers will easily achieve it when they shop for third-party chargers and power banks.