Enable Fast Wireless Charging on all Pixel 3 Charging Pads

by John Garner · February 6, 2019

One of the more convenient additions to the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL this year was support for wireless charging. And as you already know, Google embraced the new tech with a Pixel Stand accessory. This can charge your Pixel smartphone while providing easy access to Google Assistant and even doing more than that.

It can wake up in a gentle way or act as a photo frame, but not everyone is interested on such a product in the first place. The point is that if you want to get the fastest wireless charging speeds out of your Pixel 3, you must own the Pixel Stand. If you have a Pixel 3, but only a non-certified charging pad, there is though a simple way to increase the charging limit.

Senior member “k0rner” has found this interesting method to enable fast wireless charging on all Pixel 3 charging pads. And here I am to tell you more about it as you can apply it for your handset too.

Fast Wireless Charging on every single Charging Pad:

There is a control file in /sys/class/power_supply/wireless, voltage_max which has a default value of no more than 5000000 (5V). The idea is that this can be changed up to 9V. If you do that, the charging current goes from 750mA all the way up to 1290mA, which lead to an increase of 72% in charging speed. That’s quite something, don’t you think?

That’s the code that I am talking about:

echo 9000000 > /sys/class/power_supply/wireless/voltage_max
# Now, check what we’ve got
grep . /sys/class/power_supply/wireless/voltage_*
voltage_max:9000000
voltage_now:8568000 # Means it has been raised by device

Before starting anything, you must keep something in mind. Remember that the Pixel 3 device must be wirelessly charging otherwise the file will simply refuse the changes. I am sure that this is not what you want, so do take that in consideration from the start. And do not act surprised to see that this change reverts after the end of charging session. It can though be changed permanently with a Magisk module, but that’s a different story, out of newbies reach.