The iPhone XS Max comes with a 3174mAh battery which is good enough to last more than a day of heavy use and even outlast some other flagship Android devices out there. However, despite a starting price tag of $1,099, Apple in all its wiseness bundles a measly 5W power adapter with the device.
This means the iPhone XS Max takes ages to charge from 0-100 percent. This slow charging time is further exacerbated when one compares the iPhone XS Max charging times to other flagship Android devices like the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, Google Pixel 3 XL, and the Galaxy Note 9.
The Huawei Mate 20 Pro comes with a 40W fast charger which can charge the massive 4,200mAh battery of the device from 0-70 percent in just 30 minutes. Even the smaller Mate 20 comes with a 22.5W charger which can charge its 4,000mAh battery pretty quickly. Then there’s the Google Pixel 3 XL which comes with an 18W USB-PD charger and the Galaxy Note 9 which comes with a 15W charger. In comparison, the iPhone XS comes with a measly 5W charger which as the video below shows is awfully inadequate in this day and age.
The Mate 20 Pro with its 40W charger is the fastest of the lot to go from 0-100 percent in just under 1 hour 10 minutes. Even better, the device charged to well over 95 percent in just an hour. For comparison, the iPhone XS Max reached a paltry 32 percent after around an hour on the charger. That’s over 3x times slower than the Mate 20 Pro and even half of the 61 percent that the Galaxy Note 9 managed which comes with the slowest charging tech of all Android flagships out there currently.
Overall, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro and Mate 20 were the first devices to reach the 100 percent mark. This was followed by the Google Pixel 3 XL and Galaxy Note 9 which took just around 2 hours to reach the mark. And then there’s the iPhone XS Max which reached 67 percent after 2 hours. Ultimately, the iPhone XS Max took 3 hours and 22 minutes — that’s 202 minutes total — to charge from 0 to 100 percent. In this amount of time, one can charge their Mate 20 Pro and Mate 20 four times! Even the Galaxy Note 9 with its 15W charger can be charged almost 1.6x times in the time it takes the iPhone XS Max to charge from 0-1oo percent.
Our Take
Sure, the iPhone XS Max might offer battery life as good as the Android flagships it was compared to in the video above. But charging times are also equally important nowadays and there’s no excuse for the device to take almost 3-4x times more to charge from 0-100 percent than competing Android flagships.
One can spend additional money to buy a USB-PD faster charging to improve the charging times of the iPhone XS Max. That would ensure the device would charge from 0-100 percent in much more respectable 1 hour and 50 minutes. However, given the device is the most expensive of the bunch, there’s simply no excuse for Apple to not include a fast charger right out of the box with the device.
