There’s a bit of a mystery surrounding the iPhone 16’s charging speeds.
While Apple claims to have made MagSafe wireless charging faster, wired charging speeds remain at around 20W, but some have argued that the iPhone 16 series can also charge faster with a cable.
Is that true?
We had to find out, and for that we tested the charging speeds of all four new models of the iPhone 16 using three different fast chargers and different cables, and after all this testing we have the answer.
No, the new iPhone 16 series won’t charge faster than before
Regardless of which fast charger or cable I used, the charging speeds were as follows:
We measured these speeds using ChargerLab’s Power-Z power meter and tried out a variety of charger and cable combinations to make sure we weren’t missing anything.
The chargers I used were:
Anker 737 charger (GaNPrime)Spigen ArcStation Pro GaN 652 dual-port wall charger PE2106Samsung 45W power adapterI connected these to the official iPhone 16 cable with 3A capacity, but I also tried it with a 5A cable from Samsung and it made no difference (the Galaxy S24 Ultra, for example, requires a 5A cable for fast charging, so I had to test that too).
So, charging speeds of 20W to 27W remain the same as the previous year.
You might be wondering why the 27W number is higher than the official 20W speed advertised by Apple: That’s nothing new — Pro Max models from the last few years have been able to achieve the same charging speeds, but for some reason Apple hasn’t reflected this in the specs.
Below are the charging speeds for the past four generations of Pro Max iPhones.
We tested the charging speed of the iPhone Pro Max:
The iPhone 15 Pro Max was the only exception, charging slower than the other models. We don’t know why that is, but it may be specific to that particular 15 Pro Max model.
We tested the charging speed of the iPhone Pro:
The iPhone 16 can charge faster, but only in very specific use cases.
But there’s one very specific scenario in which your new iPhone will actually charge faster.
As soon as you start playing games or running very demanding applications (such as benchmarks), the iPhone 16 series accelerates charging speeds, reaching 38W to 39W in our tests.
The iPhone 16 Pro Max can reach around 38W, but only when a game or benchmark is running; it returns to its nominal charging speed as soon as you quit the app. (Image credit: PhoneArena)
This is a brand new feature that basically ensures that your iPhone maintains its charging speed while you are using it, meaning that these extra watts ensure that your iPhone can run powerful graphics and the remaining power is used for charging. Previously this wasn’t the case and running more powerful apps would slow down your charging speed.
However, the moment you finish your game or benchmark, the charging speed immediately reverts to the nominal 20W or 27W.
Of course, as always, these maximum charging speeds will be maintained until the charge level reaches around 50%, after which it will become much slower. This is done to protect the battery, and this gradual slowing of charging speeds applies to all phones.
Summary: iPhone 16 won’t have fast wired charging after all
In summary, the iPhone 16 models won’t charge faster, unless you use your iPhone heavily while it’s charging.
Otherwise, it will take about 1 hour and 40 minutes to fully charge your iPhone.
As for MagSafe wireless charging, it is indeed fast as Apple claims, with 25W speeds supported, which means you can now charge much faster, as you can see from the results in the chart above.
