OnePlus 9 Pro includes fast 50W wireless charging

It’s not often that the actual spec is better than the rumor, but that’s the case here: the OnePlus 9 Pro supports 50W wireless charging — a little faster than the 45W rumor we reported on earlier this year. We’ve been able to test drive this feature ahead of the phone’s official debut on March 23rd and can confirm: the 9 Pro offers really, really fast wireless charging.

OnePlus claims that the phone will charge wirelessly (with the new Warp Charge 50 charger) from 1 to 100 percent in 43 minutes, and our own testing confirmed this down to the minute. That’s a big boost over the OnePlus 8 Pro’s 30W wireless charging, which supplied a 50 percent charge in 30 minutes. The improvements aren’t limited to wireless charging, or the 9 Pro for that matter; the 9 and 9 Pro have 65W wired charging that takes the battery from empty to full in 29 minutes. While the base model OnePlus 9 doesn’t get those fast wireless speeds, it can be used with the new charger at up to 15W. Additionally, both the 9 and 9 Pro support standard Qi wireless charging at 15W.

Image: OnePlus

Fast charging has definitely been OnePlus’ “thing” for a while, and according to Kinder Liu, COO and head of R&D, it’s been a hit with customers. “Since introducing our first fast-charging technology with the OnePlus 3, we have heard a lot of positive feedback, with many OnePlus users saying it has fundamentally changed the way they charge their devices. They can simply top up for a day’s charge while getting ready in the morning instead of charging overnight.”

The OnePlus 9-series uses a twin-cell battery design first introduced in the 8T, which is part of the 9 Pro’s formula for achieving such fast wireless charging speeds: each cell is charged at 25W simultaneously. OnePlus uses higher voltage power, which produces less heat than using higher amps and avoids frying the phone by channeling the power through a proprietary charge pump.

The 9 Pro’s twin-cell battery design also helps mitigate the heat produced by wireless charging, along with some other design tweaks to help with heat dissipation, like thicker copper foil and a larger heatsink. There’s also a key feature on the charger itself that we were grateful for in our testing: a fan. The added fan noise isn’t ideal if the charger is on your nightstand, but for the Pro 9 owner who wants to keep their nighttime charging routine, there’s support for quieter charging during bedtime mode.

The newly designed charger also includes two charging coils, making it possible to charge the phone in either horizontal or vertical orientation. That’s useful if you want to multitask your charging time and watch a video, too, which OnePlus says shouldn’t affect charging speed. We couldn’t confirm that in our initial testing, but it’s something we’ll be following up on. As for the cost of the charger, we don’t have pricing yet, but last year’s Warp Charge 30 chargers didn’t come cheap — the pad version was introduced at $69.95 and the stand version for $79.95.