Since the Galaxy Note 7 fiasco a few years ago, Samsung has taken it easy on the charging speeds, so don’t expect to see any crazy charging speeds on the Galaxy Z Fold 4. But the Galaxy Z Fold 4 can charge at up to 25W. That’s actually pretty slow for a flagship smartphone in 2022. But you can get up to 50% in only 30 minutes, which is pretty decent. At 25W, it should be able to full charge the 4400mAh capacity battery in the Galaxy Z Fold 4 in a little over an hour. That’s a far cry from the 20 minutes that the OnePlus 10T takes to go from 1% to 100%.
Why doesn’t it charge faster?
So why doesn’t Samsung utilize faster charging? Well one reason is likely due to what happened in 2016. Back in 2016, Samsung released the Galaxy Note 7. And it had a big issue, it was catching on fire and sometimes exploding. It was the first (and so far, only) smartphone that had to be completely recalled. It actually got recalled twice. Since then, Samsung has been playing it safe with batteries and their charging speeds. And using some technologies that a lot of other smartphones weren’t using for charging, like PPS. Or Programmable Power Supply, in addition to USB-C PD (Power Delivery). Of course, Samsung going the slower route with charging means that your battery is going to perform at its max capacity for a longer period of time. As the much faster charging forces the battery to got hotter and thus taking a hit on the capacity. So while it’s quite annoying that the Galaxy Z Fold 4 doesn’t charge at a faster speed, it makes plenty of sense as to why.
