You finally bit the bullet and bought a fast charger for your Samsung, but for some reason, you’re not getting anywhere near the advertised charging speeds. As it turns out, there’s a surprisingly well-hidden option in the settings that needs to be switched on before your phone can take advantage of its fastest charging speeds.
Your Galaxy can charge slowly even with a fast charger
It should be enabled by default
By default, Samsung enables wired fast charging, or at the very least, it’s supposed to keep it enabled. However, if you ever messed around with your phone and accidentally switched the setting off, or a One UI update reset the setting, it might get toggled off. Since the option is relatively deep inside the settings, you would be none the wiser, but you would definitely notice the slower charging speeds.
To check if wired fast charging is enabled on your Samsung, head over to Settings > Battery > Charging settings, and make sure Fast charging is toggled on. It’s a blanket setting that disables fast charging even on compatible chargers, so you need to have it enabled even if you’re on an original Samsung fast charger or other compatible alternative.
Fast wireless charging is a separate toggle
Yet another option to check
When you dig into your settings to enable fast charging, you might notice a second option in there: Fast wireless charging.
Having a toggle for this makes a lot more sense, as wireless charging is an inherently inefficient process that can generate a lot of heat. If you’re using wireless chargers to conveniently top off your phone at your desk, in your car, or overnight, leaving fast wireless charging off isn’t actually a bad idea.
That being said, if you spent money on a fast wireless Qi2.2 charger that can provide up to 25W on a compatible Galaxy and are wondering why your phone is charging at a snail’s pace, this secret setting could be the culprit.
So, if you want the fastest wireless charging speeds available on your phone, toggle Fast wireless charging on.
It’s a bit strange that Samsung lets you turn fast charging off
There are surprisingly few reasons to disable fast charging
When fast charging first started becoming widespread years ago, people were skeptical. Forcing more current into a lithium-ion battery causes structural stress and excess heat buildup, which can accelerate degradation.
All of that’s true, but the effect is sometimes greatly exaggerated. YouTuber HTX Studio did a thorough 500-cycle battery test and found that fast charging only caused the battery health to drop by an additional 0.3%.
As for some of my own anecdotal evidence, I spent five years charging my old phone at its maximum 50W speed, and I didn’t notice that the battery degraded all that significantly more than it would have normally from all those years of use.
Even if the effect was doubled, and you lost an additional 0.5% a year because you used fast charging instead of regular slow charging, would it really make that big of a difference that you’d keep fast charging disabled? My answer would be a definite no, as having to live with slow charging permanently would be a much bigger downside than a battery that lost an extra 2% after four years.
Honestly, the only time I’d consider turning fast charging off is when I’m actively using the phone while it’s charging. The battery can self-regulate and slow down charging when it notices heat buildup from use, but the phone can still get uncomfortably hot to hold in your hand.
Samsung isn’t the only phone brand that does this
Samsung isn’t doing anything particularly unusual
While it’s easy to dismiss this as just another Samsung quirk, many Android brands expose their own flavor of a fast charging toggle, particularly for wireless fast charging.
My OnePlus 15 has an option called Smart Rapid Charging that pushes the phone toward its 120W maximum; Xiaomi phones have their own fast charging options, and Google recently launched Extreme Charging Mode with the Pixel 11.
The bottom line is, if you want the fastest charging speeds your phone can achieve, make sure to take a peek into your phone’s battery settings to see if there’s a hidden switch you need to tap first.
The charger and cable still have the final say
The real charging speed police
Fast charging protocols are complicated, and even though Samsung uses the USB-PD standard, which should make things easier, it still has some quirks that should be addressed. The default Fast Charging mode goes up to 18W or 25W, depending on the phone, but that’s a fairly easy target to hit.
Super Fast Charging is where things get interesting. The latest version is 3.0, which is available on the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra and can reach 60W charging speeds, but only if the charger and cable can handle it as well. The same is true for previous iterations of Super Fast Charging.
To be more specific, you need a charger that supports USB-PD with PPS to hit the maximum speeds on previous Super Fast Charging models. If you don’t see the Super Fast Charging notification when you plug your phone in, and you’ve got fast charging enabled in the settings, there’s a good chance it’s the cable or adapter.
You’re probably fine with leaving fast charging enabled
If you’ve got a compatible, high-quality cable and charging brick for your Samsung, there’s little reason not to use fast charging. It isn’t going to meaningfully degrade your battery over the long run, and you’ll get to enjoy a phone that doesn’t take forever to charge.
- Brand
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Anker
- Input
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100-240V~, 2.0A, 50-60Hz
The Anker Prime 160W, 3-port Charger is a small charging adapter that takes up only marginally more space than an earbuds case. With a design that’s taller than it is wide and ports placed along the bottom, this is a charging brick that holds firm to power outlets while juicing up multiple devices.
