Are Fast Chargers Bad For Your Smartphones?

Everyone loves fast chargers, the idea of just plugging your phone in the morning for half an hour instead of plugging it in overnight is just fantastic. But do fast charger harm your phone?

Every year we see a new benchmark in charging speeds, this year Xiaomi has released 120W fast charging on it’s Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra. It juices up the device’s 4,500 mAh battery in just 21 minutes. A lot of people are now worried about fast chargers degrading your phone’s battery life.

Also Read: 11 Incredible Ways To Speed Up Your Slow Windows 10 PC

What is Battery Health and How Does Fast Chargers Effect It?

Battery health is a term that describes how much a battery has degraded since it was brand new. Battery degradation is the actual Battery Capacity that has been diminished. Every Battery starts degrading the first time it charges. You may have seen this if your 2 to 3-year-old phone isn’t giving you as much battery life as it used to when it was brand new.

SuperVOOC 2.0 Charging

Now, this isn’t the problem; every rechargeable battery will degrade over time. The problem is the rate of degradation. So the way a battery works is that it has two poles, a negative and a positive, on the negative side we have a bunch of free electrons. As these electrons flow to the positive side, they will power your phone, and once they all have come to the positive pole, your battery will die.

With electricity, we can push these electrons back to the negative side, so all a fast charger is doing is just pushing these electrons faster. Now, since these electrons are moving more quickly, it causes overheating. Heat can slowly change the physical structure of your battery, So if you keep your phone at 30 degrees celsius, your battery may lose 20% of its capacity in a year.

Also Read: Is OnePlus Turning Into Oppo Slowly

A way companies are tackling this issue is by dividing your battery into two. So a company may say that its phone has 65W charging, but that is just two batteries charging at 32.5W each which will give a total of 65W. This way, your phone will also not overheat, and your battery may last longer over time. And one great example of that is the OnePlus 8T.

A Xiaomi Smartphone Charging

So, how can you improve your battery health? You can try to use slower chargers since nowadays almost all Android companies are including fast chargers with their phones. You should also not use your phone while charging since all it does is add to the heat and last but not the least try not to use fast wireless chargers, like OnePlus’s 30W wireless charger, since a wireless charger already degrades your battery health, a fast one will make it worse.

What do you think about fast chargers? Let us know in the comments below.
For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Tech Baked on TwitterFacebookInstagram, and join our Telegram Channel for daily tech news in your inbox.

Leave a Comment