Google explains the tradeoffs that led to Pixel 6’s sluggish charging complaints

Google has responded to allegations that the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro don’t cost as quick as some have anticipated, confirming that their charging speeds are a deliberate tradeoff for higher battery life. It follows a report from Android Authority which discovered that the telephones’ most energy draw was round 22W, nicely in need of the 30W that Google’s newest USB-C charging brick is technically able to.

Writing in a community support post, a spokesperson for Google confirmed that the utmost energy draw of the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro are 21W and 23W respectively when used with its 30W USB-C charging brick. They added that charging speeds additionally lower because the telephones’ batteries fill as much as protect their longevity.

In their put up, they observe that these figures are the inevitable outcomes of battery tradeoffs. “A battery can be designed for high energy density, or for fast charging power capability, which requires trading off capacity to minimize battery degradation,” says the spokesperson. In different phrases, a telephone can supply lengthy battery life, or quick charging, however it might probably’t do each on the identical time. So, Google prioritized an extended battery life and designed the telephones to attract a extra modest quantity of energy when charging.

This tracks with what we noticed in our evaluation of the 2 telephones:

”Even in the event you do use a strong sufficient charger, neither telephone fees notably rapidly. Google aggressively slows down charging as soon as it’s previous 80 % to protect the battery cells’ longevity, and since these batteries are so giant, attending to a full cost can take a very long time. Fortunately, because of the lengthy battery life, you’ll possible solely should cost whenever you’re sleeping anyway.”

Although Google’s support documents by no means explicitly state the charging speeds of the brand new telephones, their compatibility with Google’s 30W charging brick (bought individually) was taken by many to imply that their real-world most charging speeds would strategy the 30W stage, and could be far quicker than the 18W charging supported by the Pixel 5. But in actuality, Android Authority’s report discovered that the precise energy draw of each telephones peaks at 22W and averages round 13W over the course of a full cycle.

The impact of that is that the telephones cost far slower than you may count on, with Android Authority discovering that the Pixel 6 Pro takes nearly two hours to succeed in a full cost. That’s 49 minutes slower than Samsung’s Galaxy S21 Ultra, which has a similarly-sized battery however is simply marketed with 25W quick charging speeds. In reality, Google’s energy draw is so conservative that its 30W charger solely absolutely fees a Pixel 6 Pro 10 minutes quicker than its outdated 18W charger.

Google by no means claimed that the telephones cost at 30W. Instead, it marketed the period of time it takes to get from 0 to 50 and 80 % when charged utilizing its 30W charger — half-hour and round an hour, respectively. This is consistent with what Android Authority present in its checks.

As nicely as charging speeds, Google additionally just lately clarified that the seemingly sluggish efficiency of the telephones’ fingerprint scanner is due to their “enhanced security algorithms.” It later launched an replace containing “some fingerprint sensor performance improvements,” though the enhancements it delivered seemed to be minimal in follow.