What you need to know
- The Galaxy S23 Ultra appears to have rolled through China's 3C regulatory agency.
- The device is seen being tested with a 25W charger, although it will likely support higher charging speeds.
- Meanwhile, it's speculated that the standard and Plus variants will not see higher speeds than their predecessors.
- The devices are expected to launch in early 2023.
Many of the Galaxy S23 rumors have focused on camera upgrades, but one area that we're hoping receives some changes is battery life and charging speeds. While we still don't have much on the former, a new regulatory filing gives us a glimpse of the latter.
A device with the model number SM-S9180 has passed through China's 3C regulatory agency. The device in question is suspected to be the Galaxy S23 Ultra, given how close the model number is to that of the Galaxy S22 Ultra (SM-S9080 in China). Weibo leaker Digital Chat Station also corroborates this, saying that the "first new Snapdragon 8 Gen2 phone is connected to the Internet."
Besides being manufactured in Vietnam, there's not much we can learn here, although it's shown that the S23 Ultra was tested with a 25W EP-TA800 charger.
That may sound like a downgrade from the Galaxy S22 Ultra's capabilities, but since Samsung no longer bundles chargers with its flagship devices, it's likely this was just used for testing purposes.
That said, another leaker, Ice universe, isn't very impressed, seeing this as a sign that Samsung will use the same 25W charging speeds for the standard variant of the Galaxy S23, while the Plus and Ultra will likely support 45W.
S10/S20/S21/S22/S23Looks like Samsung is going to use 25W for 5 years in a row😄September 23, 2022
Given the prevalence of higher charging speeds on many of the best Android phones in recent years, many Samsung fans have called for the company to increase its charging speeds on its flagship devices. In addition, one of the biggest complaints we had with the Galaxy S22 is the middling battery life, so faster charging would at least help offset the need to plug it in fairly often. That said, we hope Samsung can at least give us a larger battery for the standard Galaxy S23.
Samsung isn't expected to launch the Galaxy S23 series until early 2023, so there's still time to learn about battery and charging. However, given the rumored similarities with next year's flagships, we don't expect there to be too many surprises.
