Is fast charging harmful

The question of the dangers of fast charging has not ceased to haunt the minds of users since its inception. It is complicated by the abundance of technological solutions from different manufacturers. After all, it is one thing when the fast charging standard is the same as for everyone iPhone, and completely different when there are at least a dozen of them, as on modern Android smartphones. This arouses the natural interest of users who believe that if there are several technologies, it means that there is an objectively best and objectively worse one among them. But this is a big mistake.

Is fast charging harmful

Fast charging is a very controversial thing

If you are too lazy to read the entire article, I will answer right away: no, fast charging does not harm your smartphone. Therefore, you can safely connect your device to a high-power power supply unit and not worry about anything. And for those who are interested in the details, I suggest reading further.

How does a battery wear out

Is fast charging harmful

The only resource a battery can lose is charge cycles

I propose to start with the definition of harm, which we can be guided by when studying such a phenomenon as fast charging.

The battery life is measured in charge cycles that it is able to endure before it becomes physically worn out, and it will no longer be able to store energy in accordance with the declared capacity. As a rule, modern smartphones have a lifespan of 500 cycles. One cycle is a complete discharge and a full charge of the smartphone. That is, in order for the counter to decrease by one, the battery needs to be discharged to 0 once and charged to 100%. The loss of available cycles is conditional harm, since no scars or cracks appear on the battery from too fast charging.

The battery has no other resources that it could lose, except for capacity. In this sense, the association with a kettle on which scale appears is very appropriate. The more water you boil in a kettle, the thicker the scale will become and the less water it will be able to hold in the future. But if the kettle can be boiled with citric acid, this trick will not work with the battery.

Battery charging cycles

Is fast charging harmful

Note how Tesla recommends charging its EVs

Cycles are the only thing that the battery loses during the charging process, which means that each quick charge session should take not 1, but 2 cycles, right? However, with all the desire, you will not find such information anywhere. Therefore, once again: no, fast charging does not cause faster battery wear. Because if this were true, no sane person would use fast charging, and manufacturers would be quickly sued and bankrupt if they only tried to keep silent about this information.

But, as you see, nothing is happening today. Manufacturers are being tried for keeping silent about slowing down smartphones with worn-out batteries, but not for fast battery wear. I think that says a lot.

Tesla electric vehicles demonstrate very well the nature of batteries. The manufacturer is not afraid to offer super-fast charging to owners of branded cars, which allows them to fully charge them in just 10-20 minutes, depending on the model. And the batteries there, mind you, are clearly more than 5000 mAh, which are installed in modern smartphones. For some reason, Tesla is not afraid to charge them quickly, but it strongly recommends charging the battery in parts and advises avoiding full charging.

How to charge your smartphone

Is fast charging harmful

Fast charging doesn't kill the battery faster. Otherwise it would have been noticed long ago

The optimal point Tesla recommends charging its EVs is 80%. This allows the battery to be consumed more slowly, because in this case not a full cycle is consumed, but only a part of it. In addition, it is best not to bring the charge below 20%. In this case, the resource that the smartphone will have to replenish will be larger, and instead of the conditional 0.5 cycles, it will use 0.7 or even 0.9.

The same condition applies to smartphones, despite the fact that their batteries, it would seem, should be different from car batteries. But no. Experts recommend charging smartphones up to 80% for the same reasons. And since it is almost impossible to keep track of the charge level on your own, it is recommended to use the AccuBattery application, which I talked about not so long ago. It will notify you to unplug your smartphone as soon as it reaches a predetermined charge level, and will also track the current battery wear.

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