How much does fast charging cost in terms of battery capacity?

27 March 2022
Have you noticed that phones with fast charging tend to have smaller batteries than phones without? We investigate whether the trade off is worth it.

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  • ?
  • Anonymous
  • n7c
  • 28 Mar 2022

IpsDisplay, 27 Mar 2022What do you mean by marketing nonsense I'll give yo... morePower = energy over time. By calculating power and specifying time, you know exactly how much energy you put into a battery, excluding charging losses. I think you're the one who's sounding ridiculous. Of course engineers spend a ton of time developing stuff that's pointless. There are more examples of this than you can count. An engineer is en employee, he designs what he's told to design. Engineers spend countless of hours in companies designing worthless stuff that doesn't do what marketing claims it's supposed to do. People like to see big numbers, that's exactly why they don't state a battery has 15Wh or 4Ah at 3.75V nominal (even though the voltage can fluctuate anywhere between roughly 4.3V and 3.2V). Noo, they tell you it's 4000mAh, because you know, bigger number makes people who don't have a degree in science or engineering think ooooh, big number must be good. My car has a top speed of 250 million millimeter per hour, spectacular!! LOL

"efficiency on time save for cells that would otherwise have to wait to get current"??? What does that even mean... You get X amount of energy from the wall, you put it through some conversion and it goes into the battery, having more or less batteries (for an equal total energy capacity) makes little difference to this. Maybe you'll get greater surface area and thus better cooling or easier to put the battery in tight spots or cost savings even, there can be numerous advantages to splitting a battery depending on what you're designing, but getting spectacularly faster charging speeds that doesn't degrade the batteries faster is not one of them, any potential gains in that area will be marginal, not orders of magnitude. Anyway, the further this discussion goes, the less useful it becomes, my original reply is all that's really relevant. You're free to believe whatever big companies marketing tells you and I will trust the knowledge I gained during my master's in electronics engineering and we'll both be happy. ^^

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    • Alando
    • CGH
    • 28 Mar 2022

    Sam, 27 Mar 2022Simple question. Can i charge a phone that, let's say,... moreYes. The phone wil only draw out the level of speed it needs and was made to use . Problem is now manufacturers have this tech that don’t allow other brands chargers to work well on their devices( ex-like to fast charge)

      • ?
      • Anonymous
      • XUv
      • 28 Mar 2022

      Anonymous, 27 Mar 2022This is complete marketing nonsense. If you split a battery... moreDividing the battery into two is not just dividing it.
      It require one more circuit board inside the battery (2 protection chip instead of 1).
      And also 1 more layer of battery "skin".

        • ?
        • Anonymous
        • XUv
        • 28 Mar 2022

        NeonHD, 28 Mar 2022This poll is basically telling us that GSMarena users have ... moreMost of "english speaking" country usually goes to slower charging speed because too many article point out that fast charging is dangerous. It's also because many of their favorite phone (iphone or Google or Samsung) don't do fast charging.

        In most asia and latin america, they prefer fast charging, because they have been using fast charging with china brand phone for long time.

          it's easy to notice . fast charging makes the battery smaller even at 18W !

            • ?
            • Anonymous
            • iF4
            • 28 Mar 2022

            I like my OnePlus 8T's 65W fast charging. Every morning it's enough when I leave it to charge for like 15-20 mins, then I have enough battery until the next morning comes.

              • ?
              • Anonymous
              • tx4
              • 28 Mar 2022

              I think 50W-80W (around 40 minute - 1 hour charge for 5000mAh) should be considered minimum in year 2022.
              Personally i want 0 to 100 at least in between 20 to 30 minutes.

                • ?
                • Anonymous
                • vjX
                • 28 Mar 2022

                Anonymous, 27 Mar 2022My nephew use iphone. There is option in iphone where it s... moreYour nephew is a female? That is impossible.

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                  • BatteryLife
                  • PGX
                  • 28 Mar 2022

                  Honestly, I will be happy with 30W charging if that means having 10% larger battery capacity.

                    This poll is basically telling us that GSMarena users have polarizing preferences. Seems like people here either want standard charging or super fast charging. My ideal would be 67W, not too slow to be annoying and not too fast to be concerning. Just fast enough.

                    I've also noticed this same trend in the amount of downloads between different NikGapps packages. Either people go for the most basic gapps package, or they go for the full gapps package. Very few people pick the middle options (e.g. Omni, stock). Interesting...

                      • ?
                      • Anonymous
                      • mXr
                      • 28 Mar 2022

                      Anonymous, 27 Mar 2022My nephew use iphone. There is option in iphone where it s... moreWell said. Tue

                      +1

                        Anonymous, 27 Mar 2022My nephew use iphone. There is option in iphone where it s... moreActually the latest video from mkbhd brings some good information about fast charging. I dont know why everyone upset if the battery is dead, if you can replace it with official battery.
                        And if you can afford $1000 iphone, it is cheap to get battery replacement (maybe just $20-$50).

                          • ?
                          • Anonymous
                          • 4Am
                          • 28 Mar 2022

                          Been using a 12w charger for years

                          It's fast enough to get a serviceable charge. Charging doesn't scale linearly with wattage anyway (i.e. A 30w charger isn't 2x as fast as a 15w charger)

                            Samarth, 27 Mar 2022Great analysis and a refreshing article topic. Congratulati... moreThis! Hope to see some more interesting analysis of their phone database in the future

                            Also, refreshing comment between the usual fighting lol

                              Andri , 27 Mar 2022Smarter can afford to pay more. Would you rather be poor an... moreYou were obviously not smart enough to get it. The ones getting your money and making you buy more, are the smart ones. But enjoy feeding them.

                                • ?
                                • Anonymous
                                • XUn
                                • 27 Mar 2022

                                My nephew use iphone.
                                There is option in iphone where it shows how good the battery is. She shows that the battery is 94% after about eight months and brags about it. She gives me xyz reasons about why iPhone's charging speed it the perfect choice. Why super fast charging is bad for xyz reasons. You know, typical iZombie. Then she always runs out of battery before afternoon without doing any gaming like I do.

                                Yet with my Xiaomi i get a great great battery life.
                                Why people like you talk like some kind of genius? To me, in reality you just talk too much. Talkative like those iZombies who eat whatever those so called mkbhd tells you about battery life and become brainless to repeat that eaten sentence again and again, "fast charging is bad, fast charging is bad, my lord youtubers said fast charging is bad "

                                I feel sad for you.

                                  Anonymous, 27 Mar 2022This is complete marketing nonsense. If you split a battery... moreWhat do you mean by marketing nonsense

                                  I'll give you that my projected percentage increase is way off

                                  But you reducing it to only marketing bs is much worse

                                  When this is tried and true technology in laptop batteries

                                  I.dont see any calculation for efficiency on time save for cells that would otherwise have to wait to get current all you did was calculate watts

                                  You mean to tell me all these engineers go out of their way to design mother boards and enable parrellel charging for marketing

                                  Let me ask you this does having more than one lane on high way roads equal to marketing gimmick

                                  You don't understand how ridiculous you sound right now

                                    Danny301, 27 Mar 2022Faster charging is convenient. However, the faster the char... morei can safely say that "short" is probably two years or more, and even that maybe is not really noticeable. I'm using oppo reno5 with 65w charger, it's been a full year since i bought it and the battery still like the day one. I can still manage to squeeze the battery from morning-to-morning without any problems, not feeling any degradation at all.

                                      • ?
                                      • Anonymous
                                      • rK9
                                      • 27 Mar 2022

                                      i do have a 66watt charger in box with my iqoo yet i use 5watt overnight charging with htc adaptor. everybody sleeps yet they don't have time to charge.

                                        Velizar, 27 Mar 2022Not sure why manufacturers think people care too much about... moreAnd that's xiaomi for you😄

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