The habit of charging your phone overnight probably needs to go to sleep. That’s because the charging speed on most phones released over the last three years has stepped up so much that you legitimately might fill your phone’s battery by as much as 76% within a 30-minute charge.
Now, to be clear, I’m not saying that you must stop charging your phone overnight. While some reports support how you can lengthen your battery’s overall lifespan by charging it less, Android and iOS each have settings like charge limits and the ability to slow down charging speeds to help prolong battery life even if you charge overnight every day. You might even want to use features like StandBy mode in iOS, which makes your phone act like a bedside alarm clock while charging.
I use a sleep tracking app that recommends being plugged in while it listens to how long I snore. In short, if overnight charging makes sense, I’m not here to stop you.
But if your sole reason for charging overnight is to ensure that your phone’s battery makes it through the next day, you likely don’t need to. Our CNET Labs data from the 115 phones we’ve tested since 2023 shows that most handsets recharge fast enough that charging your phone in the morning is fine.
Faster-charging phones are broadly accessible
Two years ago, I wrote about how I wanted the fast wired charging I found in testing niche gaming phones to be on mainstream handsets. Phones like the 2024 Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro support 65-watt speeds and, in my tests, recharged its battery from empty to 67% in 30 minutes. OnePlus phones have supported these speeds for years but require a proprietary power adapter.
Now in 2026, I see phones charge faster in general — even some sub-$600 phones support 65-watt charging speeds. But a phone’s charging speed is just one indicator of how much time it’ll take someone to recharge a battery. How long a phone takes to charge has as much to do with its battery size, what it is made of, its cooling system and its software as it does with the maximum supported charging speed.
To take all these variables into account, we run the phones we review at CNET in a 30-minute charging test using the cable that comes with the phone and a wall plug that supports its top charging speed. And using data going back years, we found that phones released in the past year charge faster in our tests than those from two or three years ago.
Samsung’s $1,300 Galaxy S26 Ultra, which earned a CNET Lab award for fastest wired charging phone, charged its battery from 0% to 76% in our 30-minute test. Compare that to the 2024 Galaxy S24 Ultra and 2023 S23 Ultra, which both added 45% to their batteries in the same test. The boost in the S26 Ultra is likely due to its 60-watt speed compared to 45 watts on the previous Ultra models.
We found similar improvements with Samsung’s affordable Galaxy FE phones, with the $649 Galaxy S25 FE’s recharging its battery from 0% to 69% in our test. That’s a big gain from the 2024 Galaxy S24 FE, which added 56% and the 2023 Galaxy S23 FE, which added 54%. The newer S25 FE supports 45-watt wired charging, compared to the 25 watts on the S23 FE and S24 FE.
Apple’s iPhone line also got noticeable speed boosts over the last three years. The $1,099 iPhone 17 Pro added 74% to its battery in our 30-minute test. This is substantially faster than 2025’s iPhone 16 Pro, which added 57% and the 2023 iPhone 15 Pro that recharged its battery from empty to 62% in our test. The increase is largely due to the 40-watt speeds the iPhone 17 series supports, compared to the 20 watts on the iPhone 15 line.
Our testing shows that Google and Motorola brought speedier charging times to their phones under $500, and the difference over the past three years is quite noticeable. Google’s $499 Pixel 7A (2023) and Pixel 8A (2024) recharged their batteries 38% and 30%, respectively, in our 30-minute test. The 2025 Pixel 9A, also $499, added 46%, while this year’s Pixel 10A added 57%.
The Moto G Stylus had its own speed glam up in 2025, when the $400 phone launched with a 68-watt charging speed, a notable upgrade from the 2024 model’s 30-watt maximum. In our 30-minute test, the 2024 Moto G Stylus 5G recharged by 38%, but the 2025 model added 74% — making it one of the fastest phones we tested. That speed carried over to the 2026 edition of the Stylus, which now costs $500, and recharged from 0% to 71%.
To get faster speeds, you need the right charger
So if you’re using a phone made within the last three years, there’s a good chance it supports faster charging. Unfortunately, since phone makers generally don’t bundle charging adapters with their phones anymore, this is where you will need to do a bit of research to know what speed your phone is capable of and get an adapter that goes with it.
While Anker recently released a 45W power adapter with a display that shows you how much your phone is charging, it’s not entirely necessary. Generally, you’ll want to find out your phone’s charging speed (CNET is a great resource) and then get a power adapter that supports it. You might even get one that doubles as a charger for your laptop, like Apple’s Dynamic Power Adapter. Many USB-C power adapters are increasingly able to double up for both devices.
