Galaxy S8 Owners Complain About Wireless Charging Issues
No smartphone is going to be perfect. Even Apple's iPhones have their fair share of complaints and imperfections. Given how high-profile the Galaxy S8 is, it's really no surprise that there is a lot more noise being made about each and every potential defect or problem. Following complaints of red tinted screens, some Galaxy S8 owners are now finding themselves unable to charge their smartphones wirelessly even when using Samsung's own wireless fast charging pads.
Some things need to be clarified before diving deeper into the issue. First, the issues seem to only arise when using Fast Charging, something that both the Qi wireless charging standard and Samsung officially support. Standard, non-fast charging seems to be unaffected, whether the charging pad came from Samsung or not.
However, Samsung's own fast charger pads seem to also exhibit the problem but only if they were made before the Galaxy S8 was launched. That is, official Fast Charging pads for the Galaxy S7 and older are affected. Only the pad launched with the Galaxy S8 works without a hitch. The one exception is the flat/horizontal wireless charging pad from Samsung, the very first fast wireless charger it put out, which also works fine with the Galaxy S8.
So this is what happens when a Galaxy S8 is placed on top of a fast charging pad for the Galaxy S7. A notification informs the user that an irregular charge is detected. There is also a reappearing "Wireless charging paused" message at the bottom of the screen. This implies that the Galaxy S8 isn't receiving the proper amount of charge from Samsung itself.
Although not as critical a problem as the red screens, it is still a contentious problem. Samsung's fast wireless charging implementation is said to be supported by the Qi standard. This has the implicit guarantee that the feature should work using any other standards-compliant fast wireless charger, especially Samsung's own. Hopefully it is something that can be simply fixed by an update, otherwise Samsung's PR problems will be piling up.
VIA: XDA, Samsung Community