100W universal fast charging is here, there’s no excuse Apple and Google

Ah, I hear you exclaim, 100W charging in a phone is hardly news — proprietary charging standards from China hit that benchmark years ago. But Xiaomi is doing something different this year. It supports this lickety-split power level over the universal USB Power Delivery PPS protocol. That’s the very same protocol used by the far slower Google and Samsung, amongst others, and it’s not just reserved for the Ultra model either.

The good news should be obvious — with the Xiaomi 17 series, you won’t have to buy a specific charger to obtain the fastest possible speeds. The same adapter that powers your laptop, headphones, and any other gadget can also deliver 100W to this phone, as long as it meets some increasingly common requirements. Even if your plug can’t deliver the full 100W (it’ll no doubt require a rarer 20V PPS iteration), you’ll still receive the fastest charging speed the plug itself can handle, removing some of the guesswork of finding the ideal charging accessory.

Most pleasing of all, this move suggests the curtain is finally drawing on the long-running saga of proprietary USB charging protocols. While it remains to be seen if other brands will support their fastest speeds via USB PD PPS this year or if they’ll hold out for a little longer, the writing has been on the wall for some time.

In China, collaboration on the Unified Fast Charging Specification (UFCS) standard, designed to be interoperable with USB Power Delivery 3.1, has brought together the big names under a single umbrella. Their latest phones not only play nicer with each other’s charging accessories but also the key standards more widespread in Western markets.

In fact, previous-generation Chinese flagship handsets have already become much better at supporting USB PD PPS. I clocked last year’s Xiaomi 15 Ultra at 60W via PPS, making it very fast on common adapters even before the latest iteration. The OnePlus 13 and OPPO Find X6 Pro also offer around 30W of PPS power, so they’re highly compatible with fast third-party plugs and power banks.

Proprietary charging has been on the decline for a while, but this latest development makes it positively obsolete and puts pressure on the rest of the industry to do better.

Now that Xiaomi has proven that 100W smartphone charging is possible using the same standard that virtually everyone else already uses, there’s no excuse for other Android brands not to up their power game.

Google’s sluggish Pixel charging is a prime candidate for an overhaul — it’s lagged behind for too long. With peak outputs around 39W only for its Pro XL models, there’s clearly scope to do much more with its smaller phones, given Xiaomi’s capabilities across its latest lineup. Equally, its XL model is rather hot to charge, but this shouldn’t be the case given that Xiaomi can load up over twice the power in the same frame size. Google should stop cheaping out on battery technology and aim to level the playing field with the best in the business.

Rumors suggest the Galaxy S26 Ultra may finally reach 60W charging, a notable improvement even if it won’t match Xiaomi’s 100W capabilities. However, Samsung’s baseline models remain stuck with slow USB PPS charging — a 77-minute top-up on the Galaxy S25 feels bad when Xiaomi can fully charge its most affordable model in around 40 minutes. It’s time Samsung stopped dragging its feet and brought faster PPS charging to the entire Galaxy lineup.

Unfortunately, one of the big Western three has already thrown a spanner in the works of universal charging harmony. The new iPhone 17 series charges faster than ever before, but does so using USB PD 3.2’s AVS protocol rather than PPS.

While it’s unlikely to happen now, Apple really should get on the same page as everyone else. We shouldn’t need to buy yet another charger to support AVS when PPS is already widespread and enabling rivals to provide equal or better charging metrics. By jumping straight to AVS, users will remain tethered to specific chargers and have to deal with limited cross-device compatibility. Supporting PPS would enable higher power throughput on standard adapters, simplify the charging ecosystem, and reduce unnecessary e-waste from proprietary plugs.

Xiaomi has proven what we’ve known all along: there’s nothing stopping brands from using the universal USB PD PPS standard to deliver blazing-fast charging with universal compatibility when you need it most. Now that it’s here, Apple, Google, and Samsung have nowhere to hide. I want them to rise to the challenge — though I won’t hold my breath.