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Take charge of your sustainability with Galaxy mobile chargers

Charging your phone every day is a familiar habit, but did you know that the charger continues to consume energy even when you’re done charging? You can do something to reduce this “vampire power” consumption with a simple product swap. Our latest mobile chargers are another useful choice to reduce your environmental impact. Making these everyday changes helps pull our future back from the brink.

Samsung’s four-point “Galaxy for the Planet” initiative includes a goal to decrease standby power consumption of all mobile phone chargers to less than 0.005W by 2025. In fact, our current generation of 25W and 45W mobile chargers use only 0.02W in standby mode, among the most efficient available. Switching to an energy-efficient charger can help you carve away at your carbon footprint. Learn more about how charging your phone could be draining—or saving—precious resources.

Tackling the standby power problem

You might think disconnecting your device as soon as that battery icon hits 100% counts as doing your part for the environment, but the truth is, to be able to supply a smartphone with power instantaneously, chargers stay in standby mode and continue to consume electricity unless you unplug them or shut down your power source. If you have an older charger, it may be eating up watts of power long after you’ve unplugged your phone. Samsung’s newest chargers switch to sleep mode as soon as you disconnect your device—only “waking” the charger once you reconnect it.

Standby power consumption has long been recognized as a contributor to the power waste. Back in 2012, Samsung reduced the standby power consumption of Galaxy device chargers to 0.02W. But the lead engineers of the Power Solution Group at Samsung’s MX Business were able to do more, and the team is working to deliver more efficient standby power performance in chargers throughout the Samsung product range.

Between 2014 and 2019, we sold 542.3 million chargers, which resulted in aggregate power savings of about 350 million kilowatt hours of energy. That means we’ve helped reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 248,039 metric tons, or the equivalent of removing 53,943 cars from the roads for a year. It’s one small step in a critical race to reach a net-zero economy.

Protecting the planet is our business

I’ve learned that achieving energy efficiency depends on everything, from the way each of us use our devices to the energy it consumes while turned off,” said Wonseok Kang, an engineer in Samsung’s MX Power Solutions Group. “I don’t think many people realize that the energy our phones consume while switched off has big impacts on our planet,” he says.

Wonseok hopes the new Galaxy chargers will inspire consumers to make their own choice to chip away at society’s energy use by changing their daily habits and choosing advancements that reduce energy use when at home, work and play.

"As someone who believes small actions can add up to big change, I’m excited that my work in innovating power-saving technologies can help reduce the world’s power consumption and help Galaxy users lead more eco-conscious lives,” Wonseok says.

Save energy every time you unplug your phone

In addition to choosing an efficient 25W and 45W charger, available separately in white and block versions compatible with most Galaxy Ecosystem devices, consider making several other changes in your battery settings to make your device go longer between charges.

First, open the Battery and device care settings, where you can enable the Protect battery feature to limit charges to 85% of your battery’s capacity, which will extend the life of your device. Next, turn off the Always On Display feature and enable Adaptive battery so your device automatically limits battery use for non-critical apps. And, if you can do without smooth scrolling on your Galaxy S, Note or Z Series device, turn on Power saving mode, which changes the screen refresh rate to 60Hz from the default 120Hz. Finally, enable the Limit CPU speed to 70% setting. Collectively, these choices can extend daily battery life so that you can keep your phone off the charger more of the time.

Energy-saving designs are critical to reducing overall power consumption and increasing energy efficiency across our products. Making the switch from a standard charger to one of Samsung’s latest chargers will give you a fast charge with energy savings that curb carbon emissions. That’s a choice we hope every conscious tech user can get behind.

Charge smart and sustainably