Battery life remains one of the most important features of any new phone. No matter how energy-efficient smartphone components get, we still care about good battery life, which can get us through the day with ease. The Galaxy S10 is the best example in that regard. The phone will have 7nm/8nm chips that will be more efficient than last year’s processors, but recent reports made some people question whether the phones’ batteries are big enough, or whether they charge fast enough. However, a new series of leaks gives us plenty of reasons to get excited about Galaxy S10 battery life.
To recap what happened in the previous months when it comes to battery life, I’ll tell you that we learned that battery capacities for the three models will start at 3,100 mAh for the Galaxy S10 Lite and go up to 4,000 mAh for the Galaxy S10 Plus — that’s 4,100 mAh according to a newer leak. Insiders then claimed the phones will have faster battery charging speeds than previous Samsung flagship, with one of them going as far as saying that the phones will have graphene batteries. All the while we learned that the phones will be even thinner than ever, in spite of sporting batteries bigger than their predecessors.
But there was one bad news among all of these Galaxy S10 battery leaks, a report that said the phones would ship with the same kind of charger as their predecessors. That report was based on documentation that Samsung had filed with Chinese authorities, therefore, it carried a little more weight than other battery rumors.
The report said that Samsung’s new phones would come with EP-TA200 chargers that support 9V/1.67A and 5V/2V charging speeds, or 15W and 10W charging, respectively.
But over the weekend, Slashgear published leaked images for a Samsung EP-TA300 charger (image above) that supports 12V/2.1A on top of the TA200’s charging speeds. In other words, the TA300 does charging at 25.2W.
Assuming someone hasn’t faked this new Samsung Adaptive Fast Charging charger, this can only be seen as confirmation that fast charging is indeed in the works for the Galaxy S10, just as many people expected. After all, this phone should be better in every way than its predecessor, and that includes battery life.
Back when the TA200 documentation was found, I did say that the default charger of the Galaxy S10 line may be one that doesn’t support full charging speeds, as it’s the case for the new iPhones, for example. And that users may have to purchase an extra charger from Samsung to take advantage of the new battery tech.
Separately, long time Samsung insider who previously teased faster battery charging tech for the Galaxy S10, also said over the weekend that the Galaxy S10 “featured excellent battery optimization and a more advanced cooling structure.”
What is interesting is that those reports that mentioned Samsung’s graphene battery tech did say the technology makes possible faster charging speeds and protect against overheating. Needless to say, we have no details about the Galaxy S10 batteries for the time being. Also, I’ll add that LG a few days ago teased an unexpected component that will go into future flagship devices, including the G8 ThinQ coming at MWC 2019. That’s a bigger cooling system than the one featured on previous devices. It wouldn’t be surprising for Samsung to pull off something similar.
Finally, there’s one more Galaxy S10 battery feature that was rumored previously, only to receive some unofficial confirmation in the past few days. The Galaxy S10 will copy a feature of Huawei’s Mate 20 Pro phone, reverse wireless charging. That means the phone will be able to recharge other devices, including phones, headphones, wearables, as long as these devices also support wireless charging.
The image above, posted on Samsung’s forums (via TechTastic), shows a controller with five menu buttons that users will see when visiting Samsung demo booths for the Galaxy S10. The first button plays a video about the phone, the second button features the Infinity-O screen tech, the third button plays a demo for the in-display fingerprint sensor tech, the fourth button is about the cameras, and the fifth button covers the reverse wireless charging feature or Powershare.
Samsung will unveil the three phones on February 20th, during an Unpacked press conference in San Francisco.
