Google Pixel 4 supports fast wireless charging on third-party chargers

Ben Schoon | Oct 21 2019 - 10:49 am PT

Reviews of Google’s Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL went up today, and a common thread among all of them was bad battery life. There’s a silver lining, though, as Google has lifted an annoying restriction of wireless charging on the Pixel 4, opening up the phone to any third-party fast charger.

First spotted by Mishaal Rahman on Twitter, the Wireless Power Consortium lists Google’s Pixel 4 as offering support for Qi wireless charging speeds up to 11W. That’s compared to just 5W on the Pixel 3. Last year’s phones did charge at 10W, but that was using a proprietary standard only found on the Pixel Stand and some third-party accessories.

Needless to say, this is a huge improvement for the device. Wireless charging is all about convenience and not so much about the speed, but effectively doubling the charging speed is a huge and welcome upgrade.

Using our own Dylan Roussel’s Inware app, the tweet below even confirms a healthy 10.8W charging speed on the Pixel 4 on this fast wireless charging pad.

The biggest advantage to this change is that Pixel 4 users aren’t locked into an expensive wireless charging pad just to get fast speeds. Instead, a cheap 10W wireless charger from Amazon can do the job for a fraction of the cost. Anything that’s “EPP Certified” should work which includes most recently-released chargers.