What is “fast charging”?
Oppo recently announced its 125W system that can charge a 4000mAh battery in 20 minutes and up to 41% in 5 minutes! Soooooooooo fast!
With the rise of smartphone usage across the world, battery capacity in smartphones is also on a rise! Smartphone vendors are giving upto 13,000 mAh battery in smartphones! Yes, you read it correctly! 13,000 not 1300!
Blackview BV 9100 by a brand named Energizer, is a smartphone which was launched last year has 13,000mAh battery capacity! I really don’t know whether to call it a power bank with smartphone features or smartphone with powerbank features! Before you ask, it weighs around 400gm and would cost 200 dollars to your pocket, I guess you won’t keep it in pocket though!
This essays that people want more battery, so that they can use their smartphones for longer time without giving it a charge and that is why, the concept of “fast charging” came into existence!
Let me take you on a ride of fast-charging! Don’t worry it will be as fast as charging on the smartphones these days!
Alert! Math AHEAD!
The current charging standard for USB is 2.5W (i.e 2.5 Watts) and the basic formula for, Watt = Ampere(or Current) x Voltage i.e the charging adapter is sending 0.5 amps (A) of current using 5 volts (V) and that results into 2.5 Watts! Hurray! MATH OVER!
Go and check your charging adapter to find how much Watts is your charger throwing!
Basically, the charging happens in 2 phases, In the first phase: higher voltage is pushed and so charging rate is very fast and that is the reason different brands are trying to provide maximum charge in the first 20–30 minutes!
(Now, you can get why your smartphone heats up in the early minutes of charging)-
And, In the second phase, once the battery got most of the charge (80% or 90%), these fast charging adapters slowly decrease the voltage supply in order to prevent overheating of the smartphone.
(Now, you also get why your smartphone takes more time to charge from 90 to 100%)
But apart from watts and battery capacity, you need to have a compatible charger and a cable that have the compliance with the standards!
There are several popular standards such as: USB PD (Power Delivery) and Qualcomm Quickcharge. Different smartphone vendors support different standards for charging based on the requirements.
So, next time when someone asks you about fast charging!
Explain them about it! But keep it fast!
