What if you just kind of passed out after a night of heavy drink & woke up the next day realizing you forgot to plug it in and you have to leave the house in half an hour.
Enter fast charging, a feature that is supported by some modern phones and tablets that you power it up in the time that it takes no more than a shower or having breakfast.
The reason many devices take such a long time to charge normally is the limited amount of power many common wall chargers push to your phone or tablet at once, typically 5Watts or less.
The reason many devices take such a long time to charge normally is the limited amount of power many common wall chargers push to your phone or tablet at once, typically 5Watts or less.
This is a design choice that keeps manufacturing costs low and also ensures that the relatively small batteries inside of mobile gadgets won’t fry from being overloaded with too much power.
But in reality, many mobile devices can handle more than this thanks to internal circuitry that sets a maximum amount of wattage that will hit your battery at one time.
Fast chargers take advantage of this by adjusting the voltage, amperage or both to deliver up to 20 watts or even higher if your device supports the technology.
But what needs to be supported?
We are just clobbering a battery with electrons well there are a lot of other factors but the most basic one is that “with the higher power, comes higher heat”.
So a device without enough internal room for the battery to expand might end up damaged if it gets charged too quickly. So for that reason, many companies that developed fast charging technology have implemented a handshaking process between the chargers and mobiles/tablets to make sure they are both certified to support the extra power.
Samsung’s fast charge and One Plus’s DASH charge are both popular protocols but perhaps the most widespread one is Qualcomm Quick Charge, which is found in a large number of Android devices.
So this means that just because the charger says it supports 2.5 Amps at 5 volts, doesn’t necessarily mean that it will charge your phone super fast. Although many devices that support fast charging do come with compatible chargers, you will pay a premium for extra ones.
And you might need to buy slightly nicer cables too as cheap thin 28 gauge cords often can’t handle the extra current very well.
Also, remember that as we mentioned fast charging can generate more heat which is harder on your battery and may shorten its longevity. A real concern now that so many phones are very difficult to open if you want to put in a new battery.
Plus fast charging is much more useful when your battery is significantly drained and you need a really quick partial charge to keep you afloat for a little while.
Speeds tend to taper off significantly as your phone gets closer to 100%, unlike the charging speed you get from 0 to 50%.
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