The Pixel charges via USB-C, and uses USB-PD (Power Direct) to pull a whopping 7 hours of battery life in fifteen minutes from its 18W charger when starting with a near-dead smartphone. (USB-PD, like most quick-charging solutions, scales down the power draw depending on how badly your smartphone is hurting for battery life.) Combine that with the Pixel’s 2770mAh battery, and Google’s smartphone is not only going to last longer, but come back from the dead much more quickly than either of Apple’s smartphone options.
The thing is, Apple has quick-charge technology in the 12.9-inch iPad Pro and its various mobile accessories; the company is also no stranger to USB-C, having used it in the MacBook. It may not have been feasible to stick that kind of quick-charging into the iPhone 7 given time and resource constraints, but that only makes me more greedy for it in next year’s iPhone. The age of slow-charge batteries is coming to a close, and I can only hope that Google is heralding the call.
Serenity Caldwell wrote a good piece on the #MadeByGoogle event, but while I wasn’t too bothered about the camera on the Pixel, I really wish that proper quick charging would be implemented on the iPhone.
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