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Everyone appreciates great battery life in their phones but the matter of charging speed is a slightly trickier one. The biggest and most popular smartphone manufacturers in the world (Apple, Samsung, Google) don’t seem to think that it’s a particular priority.
However, the ability to juice your phone up in super-quick time is a massive advantage in our books. While it’s true that most modern phones can last through a full day without forcing you to hunt out a wall socket – and the best phone battery life out there can see you comfortably through a second day – there are still plenty of everyday occasions where you need to splash and dash.
On such occasions, the capacity to go from ‘in the red’ to ‘green light on full media consumption’ in a matter of minutes can be huge.
Many of the following phones are exceptional for a number of reasons but they win a place on this list for supporting rapid charging.
Fastest charging phones: How we test
We’ve tracked down the officially provided stats for many of the fastest-charging phones launched in the UK over the past 12 months. Where not available, we’ve timed the empty-to-full charging speeds ourselves, using the officially supplied charger or a suitable equivalent.
We’ve published the results in one easy-to-use graph, which you’ll find below. You’ll notice that popular brands like Samsung, Google and Apple are completely absent from this list – that’s simply because these manufacturers don’t prioritise speedy charging. The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, for instance, supports 45W charging and takes around 57 minutes to fully juice up, while both the Google Pixel 9 Pro and Apple iPhone 16 Pro take over an hour.
In our experience of testing a vast number of smartphones over a number of years, these official figures tend to be pretty accurate. We’ll always state in our reviews where we don’t find this to be the case.
We should issue a caveat in all this. In recent years, most smartphone manufacturers have stopped bundling a charger with their phones. Combined with multiple competing fast charging standards, which don’t all play nicely with one another, you may need to purchase an official charger separately if you want to capitalise on these speeds.
It’s also worth noting that several of the very fastest-charging phones on this list – most notably those from Xiaomi – require you to activate a Boost charging mode to hit the top speeds.
Fastest charging phones: Results
There’s one company out there consistently supplying phones that charge really quickly, and at a range of price points.
Xiaomi and its budget Poco and Redmi sub-brands provide several phones that support 120W wired charging. The Xiaomi 14T Pro and the Redmi Note 13 Pro Plus, in particular, can hit 0 to 100% in a stated 19 minutes, provided you activate the Boost mode, and they’re not even flagship phones.
By default, they charge a little slower in the interest of prolonging the useful life of the battery. Even then, they will generally take only 5 to 10 minutes longer to hit 100%, and can still be classed in the ‘rapid’ category.
It’s worth pointing out that there is a phone that charges quicker than this. The Realme GT3 launched with a staggering 240W wired charging back in 2023. Together with a relatively small 4,600mAh battery, it was able to take on a full charge in 10 minutes.
However, that phone’s advanced age (in smartphone terms) and the fact that it never made its way to the UK or Europe rules it out of our rankings.
With that said, here are our smartphone charging speed rankings:
Fastest charging phone: The Motorola Edge 50 Pro/Ultra
Xiaomi may have the most devices on this list but it’s Motorola that claims the fastest charging time – if only by a minute or so. Both the Motorola Edge 50 Ultra and the Edge 50 Pro utilise a rapid 125W charger (and Motorola wins bonus points for bundling this charger into the box for both) and an unusually small 4,500mAh battery to get from empty to 100% in just 18 minutes.
At the time of writing, the Motorola Edge 60 series hasn’t yet launched, but seems set to do so very soon. It’s unlikely that it will top the Edge 50 Ultra and Edge 50 Pro’s 125W charging rate, and if anything we’d expect its battery to get a little bigger, thus making it slower to charge. Stay tuned for more on that one.
For now, the Motorola Edge 50 Ultra and Motorola Edge 50 Pro are our joint-top picks if you want a phone that can get you back in the game fast when you’re running a little low.
