Samsung seems to be pondering a wholehearted embrace of the Qi2 wireless charging standard for future smartphones – magnets and all.
The brand’s current flagship smartphone range, including the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra and the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7, only goes some of the way with its Qi2 support.
These phones will technically accept the bolstered wireless charging speeds of up to 15W that Qi2 provides, but doesn’t feature any of the magnets necessary to mount and align a full-blown Qi2 charger.
This means that you’ll need to apply a Qi2-compatible case to these phones in order to benefit fully.
Samsung asking Qi2 questions
As reported by SammyGuru, that might be about to change. It points out that Samsung is running a survey through its Members app, and two of the questions concern the Qi2 standard.
The first question reads: “If only wireless charging is supported, would having Qi2 (like MagSafe) reduce any inconvenience for you?”
The very next question asks: “Would you prefer to have magnets built into the phone even if it made the phone thicker?”
Customers can even specify how much thicker they’d be willing for their devices to be in order to gain such a mounting system, with 0.3mm and 0.5mm added as options.
Eugen Wegmann
Qi2 trade-offs
Samsung appears to be thinking through the obvious design ramifications of adding full blown Qi2 compatibility. The company has recently seemed obsessed with thinness, with first the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge and then the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 offering dramatically slimmed down profiles.
Packing in a bunch of magnets would inevitably add bulk to such devices, thus rolling back on its progress.
If Samsung’s customers overwhelmingly answer that they would prefer Qi2’s convenience to a slightly slimmer form factor, however, you can bet that Samsung will perform an about turn.
Depending on the outcome of this survey, we could be seeing a proper Qi2 magnetised charging system in the Samsung Galaxy S26 and Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 series.
With Google tipped to supply something similar in the Pixel 10 range from 20 August, Samsung could be playing catch-up with more than just Apple.