Samsung’s new Galaxy S25 series brings a few improvements, especially for the flagship Galaxy S25 Ultra. While the new ultrawide camera, improved build, and thinner body may be the ones that stand out the most, one particular feature could offer the best quality of life improvements.
The Galaxy S25 Ultra comes equipped with the same 45W charging speeds as its predecessors, although overall charging speeds have been improved by around 3-4% over last year’s Galaxy S24 Ultra. Alongside this, however, Samsung has also equipped the Galaxy S25 Ultra with compatibility for the Qi2.1 wireless charging standard, making it the first smartphone to support the next generation of wireless charging.
However, you need to buy the official Magnetic Wireless Charging Case to take advantage of this. I’ve been using it for a few days and here’s why everyone should buy it if you plan to wirelessly charge your new Galaxy S25.
Understanding the history of wireless charging
Samsung was the first to make wireless charging commonplace on smartphones — beating Apple by two years and Huawei by four years — with the launch of the Galaxy S5 series almost a decade ago. However, since then, the wireless charging standard hasn’t changed much, although speeds have somewhat improved.
Meanwhile, Apple took a different approach. The iPhone 8 series in 2017 was the first to offer Qi wireless charging, but just three years later, the company rolled out the MagSafe magnetic wireless charging standard for all of its flagship phones. The result was a much better wireless charging standard and one that solved many of the alignment and efficiency problems with the core Qi standard.
Recognizing this, the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) borrowed from MagSafe to build the Qi2 wireless charging standard in 2023. The WPC is an industry group that builds the open wireless charging standard, and Apple officially joined it alongside the rollout of Qi in its iPhones. This would ultimately prove beneficial for all smartphones with the advent of Qi2 charging two years ago.
What is Qi2 Magnetic Charging?
The Qi2 standard brings many of the benefits of MagSafe charging to the wider smartphone ecosystem. Mainly, it benefits from the faster wireless charging speeds and crucially, adds support for magnetic alignment. The latter has made the MagSafe system so effective, and solved one of the biggest problems with wireless charging in general: ensuring the charger is perfectly aligned with the coils in your phone. Often, a slight misalignment would make charging much slower — or it wouldn’t work at all — but Qi2 charging solves this with strong magnets.
However, like the rest of the Android ecosystem, different manufacturers take different approaches to implementing this. Oppo and OnePlus both support magnetic wireless charging, but use a proprietary standard to achieve double the official speeds of Qi2. Meanwhile, Samsung opted for Qi2 support but opted against including magnets in the Galaxy S25 series; instead, you need this new Magnetic Clear Cover.
The case to buy for superfast wireless charging
The Galaxy S25 Magnetic Clear Cover does exactly what you expect it to: it’s a clear cover that adds magnets to the back of your phone and is designed to allow you to take full advantage of the Qi2 wireless charging speeds. While first-generation Qi charging caps out at 15W, the Qi2 standard technically supports up to 25W, but so far, the iPhone 16 series is the only phone to support this full speed, and that’s when used with an updated MagSafe charger. The Galaxy S25 Series is limited to 15W charging, although this still pales to the 50W wireless charging offered by Oppo and OnePlus.
Like many of the best iPhone clear cases, the magnet sticks out like a sore thumb — not literally, but figuratively given the design — but hopefully, the official case will spur many third-party companies to launch a range of different designs. I’ve also recently been using the new vegan-leather Galaxy S25 Ultra Kindsuit case, and I do wish that Samsung had also included magnets in this case, or its official silicon cases, as this would have offered the best of all worlds.
Nonetheless, the magnetic clear cover offers welcome protection for your new Galaxy S25, allows you to show off the colors — such as the gorgeous Navy and Coral Red Galaxy S25 — and features precision cutouts for the different ports. However, one thing to note is that, unlike the Kindsuit case that provides full coverage for the charging ports, the Magnetic Clear Cover leaves that area mostly unprotected.
How long does it take to charge the Galaxy S25 Ultra wirelessly?
The lack of an official case with magnets that isn’t clear means you have a choice: do you want a clear case with magnets or a more protective case that foregoes magnetic wireless charging? The only way to determine whether it’s worth it is with a charging test, so after waiting for the Galaxy S25 Ultra battery to drain — which is no mean feat as it has consistently lasted for multiple days — here’s what I found.
I’ve previously tested the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s wired charging speeds and found that it takes around 67 minutes to charge to full. Given the 5,000 mAh battery, this produces a standardized charging speed of 75 mAh / minute, which is the fastest I’ve ever experienced on a Samsung phone, but still pales when compared to a key rival device that is more than twice as fast.
Meanwhile, with the Magnetic Charger Cover attached and the phone magnetically attached to the Belkin adjustable charging stand — which can charge at the full 15W speeds — the Galaxy S25 Ultra takes 3 hours and 20 minutes, which is equivalent to 25 mAh / minutes. For context, the OnePlus 13 charges to full in 75 minutes — or 81 mAh / minute — which is over three times faster than the Galaxy S25 Ultra.
What about a quick charge? While the Galaxy S25 Ultra charges to 50% in under 30 minutes when plugged into a 45W charger that supports Samsung Fast Charging 2.0, it takes over an hour longer at 1 hour and 35 minutes when charging wirelessly with the Magnetic Charging Cover.
Interestingly, when you first connect the Galaxy S25 Ultra it says it will take just 2 hours to charge to full, but this constantly slips to almost three-and-a-half hours.
Why this case is still worth buying
Qi2 charging is an absolute mess, and although the Galaxy S25 Ultra supports the standard, it is still limited to just 15W charging. This is a far cry from the 25W charging supported by the iPhone 16 Pro, and significantly slower than the 50W proprietary charging standard offered by Oppo and OnePlus.
However, despite this, the official magnetic charging cover is still worth buying if you prefer to charge your phone wirelessly, you have MagSafe-compatible accessories already in your home, or you’ve been eyeing up magnetic accessories for your home, office, or car.
The addition of magnets makes charging an absolute breeze, and while it’s slow and I still plan to plug in when I need a quick charge, this has quickly become my favorite way to charge my phone overnight. I just wish that Samsung offered a different color option other than clear; I dislike the look of a magnet on a phone — this isn’t just limited to Samsung’s case — and think there could be so many prettier ways to implement this. Of course, if you don’t plan to use magnetic wireless charging, you’re better off picking up one of the best Galaxy S25 Ultra cases instead.
