Galaxy S26 phones might not get those big charging upgrades, after all

For a whole lot of smartphone shoppers, power is the name of the game. And we’re not talking performance, either, like how high you can get those benchmark figures, but electrical power: how much charge your phone holds, and how quick and easy it is to get it recharged. Phones like the Pixel 10 series have us all talking about wireless Qi2 25W support, and the rise of super-thin models like Apple’s new iPhone Air are forcing us to ask what kind of trade-offs we’re willing to accept. Today we’re looking at the power situation for Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S26 series, and it might not be great news for all those phones.

Samsung’s admittedly doing a lot of things right when it comes to batteries, and we continue to see Galaxy phones outdo the competition in terms of their ability to endure extended charging cycles. But there are still plenty of other power issues we’d like to see improved, and rumors have already suggested a few places where S26 phones could be delivering some meaningful upgrades, like the Ultra pushing past 45W charging speeds, or Samsung embracing Qi2 magnets.

So what’s the bad news? Well, the S26 phones are still several months out, and not everything we hear about upcoming hardware necessarily pans out. This week we’ve spotted a couple finds that cast some doubt on a few of those improvements.

Over on neo-Twitter, Ice Universe attempts to shoot down the hopes of anyone itching for speed upgrades on the Galaxy S26 Pro or S26 Edge, posting that both will top out at 25W — the same as this year’s S25 and and S25 Edge. For flagship wired charging speeds, that number’s sounding increasingly unsatisfactory every year, and especially with this Pro branding shift, it would be nice to see specs that live up to the name.

The bad news doesn’t stop there, and SammyGuru has uncovered speed ratings in Chinese regulatory filings that appear to throw some cold water on previous rumors of speed upgrades. At least, the Chinese version of the hardware only reports support for up to 45W charging — and if that’s the same hardware we get, there may be no upgrade waiting for us.

That would be the Ultra in the middle there — do the math on the voltage and current combos supported, and we see it topping out at 45W. This also seems to lend support to the idea that the Pro and Edge won’t be joining the 45W party, showing support for only 25W charging.

Maybe a lack of forward momentum on charging speeds isn’t the end of the world — it’s not like Samsung’s backpedaling and making things slower, or anything — but for a company that often represents the best of what Android can do, it’s not the best look. Here’s hoping that this isn’t the end of the story, and that Samsung still has a way to get us excited about the batteries in its entire Galaxy S26 series.