Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
For the past few months, I’ve delved deep into the mess that is Qi2 on the Pixel 10 series. When I started out my tests, I thought, “Oh, how complicated could it get? Just get a Qi2 charger, put your phone on it, and boom, done!” But many chargers and power banks later, I’ve learned that Qi2 on Google’s Pixel 10 phones is a convoluted, annoying, disappointing story. Here is what I found out, and how I found it out.
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Don’t use a Qi charger for your Pixel 10
Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
The first lesson you need to keep in mind when wirelessly charging your Pixel 10 phone is that you should look for a certified Qi2 charger. A 15W Qi2 charger will work with all four phones in the series, but if you want an admittedly small boost in charging speed, you can get a Qi2 25W (also known as Qi2.2), but only for your Pixel 10 Pro XL.
Do not fall into the trap of thinking that a 15W Qi charger will do the same job as a Qi2 15W charger, not even the Extended Power Profile-certified ones (EPP). On paper, Qi2 is backwards compatible with Qi, and these two chargers should deliver the same power to your Pixel 10. In reality, they don’t. Why? Pixel 10 phones seem to prioritize the Magnetic Power Profile (MPP) handshake of Qi2 when placed on a wireless charger, and when they don’t find it on those older Qi chargers, they don’t fall back to EPP to make use of the higher 12W or so of power from them. Instead, they ask the charger to go to the much lower and safer Basic Power Profile (BPP) at 5W.
Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
In all of my tests, I found out that the 15W- and 25W-rated Pixel 10 Pro and XL were dropping to an effective charging rate of only ~3.6W (which matches the theoretical 5W of BPP) on my 10W and 15W EPP-certified Qi chargers from SwanScout and Baseus (red cells in the table above). The Pixel 9 series, which doesn’t have Qi2, was able to get more power out of those same chargers (blue cells). To get a better charge for my Pixel 10 phones, I had to use certified Qi2 chargers.
15W Qi-certified chargers will only deliver 5W of charge to your Pixel 10 on a good day. You need Qi2-certified chargers.
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