I want Apple, Google, and Samsung to copy this brilliant charging feature

Playing with the new HONOR Magic 7 Pro, you will find plenty of interesting and innovative features to sink your teeth into. But one of my favorites might just be a small but delightful feature that’s super easy to gloss over — boost charging.

How it works is very simple and pretty elegant. When you plug in the phone, a charging notification pops up and asks if you’d like to boost your charging speed (see the image above). If your phone is locked when you plug in, you can even just hold down in the middle of the screen to activate the mode. If you do this, the phone will charge up a bit faster by sustaining high power for longer, throwing caution to the temperature winds.

The HONOR Magic 7 Pro already charges very quickly, hitting full in just 32 minutes when pulling up to 80W from a compatible SuperCharge plug. Impressively, it achieves that without exceeding 40°C by dialing back the power when this temperature is reached. Flick the boost option on, and this accelerates to a marginally speedier 30 minutes. However, it doesn’t do this by boosting peak power; the phone still only touches above 80W briefly; instead, the phone hovers well above 45W for most of the charging cycle.

With boost mode enabled, the early cycle charging speed is about the same; it’ll reach 50% in just under 13 minutes rather than just over, while reaching 75% takes 20 minutes instead of 22. It’s only two minutes faster to reach 100%, too. But every second counts when you’re in a hurry, and it’s important to remember that boost mode ensures faster speeds even if you’ve been using the handset recently. Charging power won’t throttle back aggressively if the phone is already warm from a gaming session, for example. The trade-off is that peak temperatures increase to a more uncomfortable but not quite alarming 43°C while the average rises from 36.9°C to 38.7°C.

The temperature increase indicates this is an “emergency” feature to activate when you need more juice in a hurry. Those higher average and peak temperatures will wear down the battery a bit more over time. However, when you’re charging overnight, for example, you don’t need all that power and extra stress on the battery, so just ignore the prompt. HONOR also includes an 80% charging limit and schedule tracking settings, showcasing its commitment to battery health over raw speed.

OPPO has a similar option with the Find X8 Pro. Plug the phone into a compatible charger, and it’ll ask you if you want to use “Smart rapid charging,” though you have to manually disable it once enabled. Again, this claims to charge slightly faster at the expense of higher temperatures. However, in my testing, it didn’t make a discernable difference to the phone’s now slower charge times, but perhaps I just haven’t found the right combination of factors to kick it into gear.

In any case, super fast charging is wonderfully convenient, of course, but high temperatures and voltages are the bane of long-term battery health and aren’t something I want to subject my daily driver to regularly. One of the reasons I’ve steered clear of proprietary charging with Chinese flagships in recent years is that I don’t want to have to replace the battery after just a couple of years. By contrast, slower charging helps delay inconvenient battery replacements, but all too often, my comparatively sluggish Pixel has left me feeling that dreaded battery anxiety after I forget to charge overnight. Boost charging grants us the best of both worlds.

Even in my short time with this feature, it’s proven handy on a couple of occasions. I wanted to catch the golden hour for a few review snaps, only to realize I’d previously discharged the Magic 7 Pro to about 20% battery. In a handful of minutes, with the boost activated, I could dash out just in time for the sunset with plenty of juice in the tank. I’m sure you’ve experienced a similar need for a last-minute top-up, whether you’re just about to catch a flight or simply want to get back to watching a video. Equally, I’ve left the phone to charge overnight safe in the knowledge that it’s running cool enough to keep the battery healthy for years to come.

I’m impressed enough by the idea that I think it’s a feature every phone should have. In fact, a lot of today’s slower-charging phones would benefit from boost charging even more than HONOR’s latest flagship. The household trio of Apple, Google, and Samsung could finally rid themselves of tedious charge times by allowing for temporary faster charging without having to risk severely degrading battery life in the long run — at least not without clearly warning users of the consequences of repeatedly using such a feature. A few phone brands, including Samsung, have long offered the option to toggle fast charging, and Apple and Google have recently moved to implement 80% charging limit options. A simple button to engage an “emergency” boost option would be a welcome complement to their healthy approaches to battery longevity.

If I have one criticism, HONOR’s and OPPO’s implementations require proprietary charging solutions to work rather than the more universal USB Power Delivery protocol. At least, HONOR works with China’s Universal Fast Charging Specification (UFCS) which itself, OPPO, vivo, Xiaomi, and a few other brands are members of, but I couldn’t get it to give me full power versus a SuperCharge plug. While UFCS is growing in third-party plug support, it certainly isn’t something you’ll find on every high-power charger on the market. The big Western three could do one better by supporting optional higher power levels on plugs that you probably already have lying around. It doesn’t even need to be a sky-high power level; just a 50W peak or better sustained 35W capabilities would help.

However, this would require these brands to invest in top-of-the-line charging circuits, better cooling solutions, and higher-tolerance batteries. It’s depressing that phones like the Google Pixel 9 Pro still take close to an hour and a half to fully charge and yet will see battery temperatures in excess of 42°C with a comparatively pitiful 27W of power. A boost switch isn’t a cure-all for Apple, Google, or Samsung charging woes, but if HONOR, OPPO, and others are pushing the idea, there’s no excuse for the other big names not to up their game.