This missing feature makes it impossible to go back to Google’s Pixel

I am a notoriously erratic device charger. I’ve lost count of how many times I heard “hurry up” while trying to get the kids out of the house over the weekend, unplugging my phone at the last possible second, praying it had enough power to get through the day.

Having spent much of my recent time with super fast charging phones like the OPPO Find X9 Ultra and Xiaomi 17 UltraI’m always pleasantly surprised that just 20 minutes with the USB-C cable while I eat breakfast is enough to get me through the day. However, recently I returned to the Pixel 10 Pro XL to reacquaint myself with their cameras and see how I feel playing with their Tensor chip again. It didn’t take long for the battery anxiety to return.

Not because the Pixel 10 Pro XL’s battery life is poor, although that’s not surprising, but simply because I keep forgetting to charge it and it takes forever to get back up when I need to. Yes, there are battery packs and MagSafe accessories I could use, but being tied down isn’t ideal when I want to whip out my Pixel and take a fleeting snapshot of the kid’s latest adventures.

If there is a feature I really want next Pixel 11 Pro XLIt’s faster and more reliable charging. Honestly, I think we already deserve it.

Falling behind the competition in more ways than one

Don’t take my word for it; Our test data also confirms my complaint. Looking at the chart below, it’s hard not to be put off by Google’s best flagship yet. It takes about twice as long to fill as the OnePlus 15but it has a smaller 5200 mAh lithium-ion cell compared to the OnePlus’s comparatively mammoth 7300 mAh Si/C lithium ion battery.

The disparity is equally bad for short reloads; 20 minutes on the plug gets the OnePlus 15-64% charged, while my Pixel languishes at 45%. Rival flagships not only offer longer battery life, but also spend less time plugging away to deliver it.

The Pixel’s charging deficiency has become even more irritating with Samsung’s adoption of 60W charging on the new Galaxy S26 Ultra. That extra power means Samsung’s Ultra reaches a full charge in just 42 minutes, the same as the fastest Chinese flagships on the market. Sure, it has a smaller 5000mAh battery than these 7000+mAh rivals, but it’ll be full before the Pixel 10 Pro XL hits 80%, and it’s miles ahead on shorter recharges, too.

In fact, even Samsung’s Plus models have 45W charging that marginally beats Google’s 37W peak. Google’s regular and Pro models have an even less powerful and slower 27W capacity. The Pixel 10 Pro XL now only has the company’s latest iPhone 17 series at the slow end of the smartphone charging rankings, but even Apple’s latest Phones supported by USB PD AVS They are faster out the door.

As the graph below shows, Google’s loading times for its most powerful flagships have remained virtually unchanged over the past three generations. Yes, the Pixel 8 Pro has a 5050mAh battery compared to the 10 Pro XL’s 5200Ah cell, but Google’s charging power has also increased from 27W to 37W, but there’s been no real improvement in time on plug for that increase.

In that time, Samsung had reduced its charging time by a very significant 20 minutes between the S24 and S26 Ultra. Meanwhile, Chinese brands like OnePlus and Xiaomi have seen their total charging times increase by around 10 minutes, but they still charge much faster than the Pixel and offer around 40% more battery capacity.

And this is despite the added complexity of Google’s very specific and still quite specialized 20V USB PD PPS charging requirement for its XL smartphones, which has complicated purchasing the right charger and broken fast charging interoperability with older plugs. Or you plug supports 20V PPSor you’re limited to the old 27W (9V/3A) power levels of the Pixel 8 Pro, with a cap on charging times to boot. Samsung’s Galaxy S26 Ultra requires 20V/3A to reach 60W, but also supports 16V and 9V backups to still provide reasonably high power with a wider range of plugs.

Whichever way you look at it, Pixel charging remains one of the phone’s technological weak points, and that’s before we get into the brand’s well-documented battery heating issues.

Unfortunately, there is no easy solution to my Pixel charging issues. On the one hand, a good portion of fans are clamoring for larger batteries to match the impressive endurance of the best phones the Chinese brand has to offer. Without an increase in charging power, this would only exacerbate the Pixel 11’s slow full charge time metrics, so the two really need to go hand in hand. However, there’s no indication that Google (or Apple, or Samsung, for that matter) is in a rush to adopt silicon-carbon batteries. Some reports suggest the Pixel 11 Pro Fold could even have a smaller battery than its predecessor.

Then there are impatient users like me who want the Pixel 11 Pro XL (and the rest of the Pixel 11 series, for that matter) to charge faster. It doesn’t have to be the fastest-charging flagship on the market, but filling a 5,200mAh battery in under an hour isn’t a difficult task by 2026 standards. Samsung has been doing it for years and has eclipsed its previous record by some margin, proving that it can be done without resorting to SuperVOOC, HyperCharge, or some other proprietary standard that turns plugs and power banks into a compatibility quagmire.

However, quickly charging a phone’s battery isn’t just a matter of accumulating more power and watching the percentages increase. Lithium-ion batteries are incredibly sensitive to input voltage and require high-quality batteries and precision integrated circuits to carefully manage the cycle. Google’s use of USB PD PPS is specifically designed to alleviate some of the strain, but there’s an art to configuring settings that’s made more difficult by its insistence on using what appear to be lower quality and presumably cheaper batteries.

Power conversion from the socket requires high-quality integrated circuits to operate efficiently and without imparting too much heat to the phones. Then there are more expensive battery technologies, such as the dual-cell technology pioneered by OnePlus and OPPO, which help reduce stress and improve energy efficiency. It is clearly possible to make any modern smartphone charge quickly; it just needs to become a hardware priority.

None of this is cheap, but this is the kind of hardware we should expect from the Pixel 11 Pro XL, a phone that will cost at least $1,199, if RAM prices don’t drive the price up. Personally, I’d rather Google invest in some extra premium hardware than another AI feature I’ll never use. Having a phone charged in under an hour is quickly becoming a deal-breaker feature for me, especially at this price. I’ll probably skip the Pixel 11 series if nothing improves this August.