Robert Triggs / Android Authority
Google’s Pixel series has, to be blunt, always been pretty slow to charge. Even the Pixel 9 Pro XL’s boost to 37W (about 35W effective) still left the phone taking a sluggish 77 minutes to reach full, while the regular 26W capabilities of the Pixel 9 and Pixel 9 Pro left last year’s users waiting about 85 minutes.
Nothing has changed for the better with the new Pixel 10 series. In fact, after testing Google’s latest flagships with the company’s new 67W USB-C charger, the situation is in some ways worse than before. I’ll let the graphs do the talking.
The “good” news is that the Pixel 10 and Pixel 10 Pro XL I tested take about as long to go from near empty to full as the previous generation — 85 and 77 minutes, respectively. However, looking at the time it takes to reach key milestones like 25%, 50%, and 75% battery, the recent models perform worse by about two or three minutes. That’s not a huge difference, but a few percentage points here and there can be significant when you’re topping up in a hurry.
This discrepancy is due to Google’s new approach to heat management this generation. The Pixel 10 and Pixel 10 Pro XL hit lower peak temperatures than last year’s models — around 38.5°C compared to the 41.8°C I recorded on last year’s XL. This is because the Pixel 10 series is more responsive to heat and even temporarily throttles charging power to keep temperatures lower.
More aggressive power throttling means even slower charging times if you've just used the Pixel.
As the graphs show, the previously consistent high-power early charging cycle now gradually wavers and declines once the Pixel 10 series approaches 36°C or so, with far more dramatic reductions if temperatures spike above 38°C. The phones are now quite happy to spend a few minutes charging closer to just 10W to allow temperatures to fall — something that didn’t happen in previous generations, at least not under normal circumstances. Of course, this is all entirely opaque to the user; we only see the familiar barebones “fast charging” notification regardless of what’s happening.
In theory, keeping temperatures slightly below 40°C is a win for long-term battery health. While some heat is acceptable and even necessary, high temperatures accelerate battery wear and tear, speeding up degradation and reducing total capacity over time.
However, both the Pixel 10 and 10 Pro XL recorded higher average temperatures this year — 33.0°C versus 30.2°C and 33.7°C versus 32.9°C when compared to last year’s models. The new algorithm draws a fraction more power in the late charging stage to keep up with last year’s phones, resulting in extra heat at this critical time when battery voltage stress is at its highest. This may actually undermine some of the benefits of lower peak temperatures, particularly on the smaller Pixel 10.
The other tradeoff is that the Pixel 10 series isn’t as quick out of the gate as last year’s models and will almost certainly charge even more slowly if you’ve recently used the phone for an intensive task. This means a bigger gap between the fastest-charging phones and Google’s Pixels when it comes to quick top-ups.
... continue reading