Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Is SUPER FAST charging BAD for your phone?”.
As smartphone enthusiasts, we love speed and specs charging is a particular area in which smartphone companies across the world have been developing rather quickly. We’Ve seen big leaps in smartphone charging tech from bbk, samsung and xiaomi over the past couple of years, and we’ve got charges capable of pushing 30 50 even 120 watts to smartphone batteries, but is more speeds more better or does the law of diminishing returns rear its Ugly head when it comes to smartphone fast charging, let’s talk about efficiency, because it’s all well and good having a 120 watt charger, but if it’s not delivering all of the power. What’S the point to test this, my colleague robert tricks put the xiaomi 120 watt charger against xiaomi’s 40 watt, poco’s 27 watt, samsung’s 25 watt and google’s 18 watt charges with the xiaomi mi 10 ultra as the target device fun fact about the xiaomi 120 watt charger. It doesn’t actually provide all 120 watts of power to xiaomi’s flagship device. It’S actually 80 watts recorded at the point of the handset and 86 watt recorded at the point of the wall. That said, when you compare the power drawn from the wall compared to the power received at the handset xiaomi’s premiere charging brick crushes the competition in efficiency being more than twice as efficient as samsung’s second place, 25 watt break huawei’s 40 watt. Brick came in last in terms of efficiency, providing power that is far off the claimed 40 watts. In fact, poco’s 27 watt charger provides more power to the device than huawei’s higher rated charger. Efficiency isn’t guaranteed at any given wattage and it’s down to the manufacturers to get the most out of their hardware, just how fast is xiaomi’s 120 watt, or rather 80 watt charging brick.
We charged the xiaomi mi 10 ultra with said charger, as well as a couple of other usb power delivery units tracking the time from 0 to a hundred percent. Before we delve into the results, it’s worth, noting that the mi 10 ultra has two 2 250 million power cells that combine for a 4 500 million power battery. This is a technique used by a handful of phone makers to allow for such rapid charging, since they can share the charge in parallel, showing the load from the super fast charging brick. As expected, the 18 watt charger doesn’t perform all that well, charging a 4500mah battery in 68 minutes, that’s not too bad, but compared to the other two.
It’S a long way off. The 50 watt pg charger managed to complete the zero to 100 charge test in just 29 minutes. Less than half the charge time of the 18 watt unit and the xiaomi charger took just eight minutes less than the 50 watt, brick an improvement for sure, but its strain on the phone and the power drawn from the wall put its viability into question 21. Minutes is fast, but does it make that big a difference to go with a 120 watt charger over, say a 50 watt one day today, probably not smartphone battery health is a huge concern with super fast charges to better understand this subject, i wanted to talk to Someone who was more knowledgeable about it, so i called my colleague robert triggs, what are the biggest concerns with such high wattages, because you see like 30 40 watt 50 watt, but this is pushing it to another level, 120. um. What what are the concerns when it comes to the actual phone and the battery inside the phone uh? So it’s kind of the same things that have always been.
You know your key issues just pushed you know to another extreme right. So when you’re charging uh any battery, but particularly very high wattages, you’ve got three three main things. You need to look out for there’s the battery voltage that you need to keep steady and stable, because that’s a big safety thing.
Then you’ve got the current that you’re putting in which will determine how quickly it charges, but also kind of the level of stress you’re. Putting on the battery and then temperature is the kind of the other, the other one uh, which will impact longevity and uh. It’S also kind of a safety thing as well.
Right, you remember the note 7 fiasco thermal runaway, so those are kind of the three things they’re all kind of linked together. So it’s not any one particular thing: okay, um. Why is he heat such a problem for batteries? Because i’ve read online? That heat kills batteries, but that’s quite broad um is there anything you could go into detailer so so the main thing with heat is battery longevity. Your battery is a chemical system and if you increase the heat in that in that system, you’re kind of exciting the electrons and making the the chemical reaction work a bit faster.
So, in some sense, uh higher temperatures can actually cause batteries to charge that little bit quicker, particularly with lithium-ion batteries. So a small temperature increase is okay, but at the same time, because you’re exciting the chemical reaction, you’re also wearing it down faster. This is what they call putting stress on the battery you’re just making it work harder than it should. What we found is, you know, although the temperatures are definitely higher when you’re using 120 watt versus even 50 watts or then 18 or 20. – it’s not at that high temperature for a super long period of time. If you’re charging things at higher temperatures – and you know higher currents and putting more stress on the battery, it won’t last as long as yeah, using a more lenient low power charger for sure. Okay – and i think final question: would you given the option, use a really high wattage charger like 120, or would you say that maybe like a 40 or 50 is a good middle ground in terms of speed and safety? The batteries in those super high wattage phones are rated or they should be at least rated to handle the high current. So so, for a really quick charge.
Super fast is fine. If i was going to put my phone down for a full charge, then no i i wouldn’t use it. I’D probably pick yeah a 30 40 50 watt charger would be more than enough, and if i was charging a phone overnight, i’d, stick it on an 18 or even a 5. One just to you know ensure that the battery lasts many years rather than just one or two, and that brings us on to the question of the hour.
Is super fast charging worth it. That’S complicated because, whilst it is super handy to top up your phone in mere minutes, these super high wattage chargers don’t provide all that much real world benefit over the already super fast 40 or 50 watt fast charges and the worries over battery longevity. With these things aren’t unfounded a middle ground charger around 50 watts with refined efficiency is probably the best bet compared to the xiaomi 120 watt charger. It’S not going to be as expensive, typically not going to be as large and when done properly is as quick as you really need. .