A full battery in 30 minutes? More and more smartphones are fully charged in under an hour. But does this fast charging damage the battery? An experiment has investigated this and provides a surprising answer.
HTX Studio, a DIY team from China, investigated exactly this question. The DIYers purchased 10 identical iPhones and 10 Android smartphones, then divided them into groups. One group was charged with a fast-charging power supply unit, and the other with a slow charger. After six months and 500 complete charges, we finally have an answer.
How Did It Go?
The iPhones were divided into two groups. Three devices were charged with Apple’s 40-watt power supply, and the other three with the old 5-watt power supply. Another iPhone was not charged at all to determine the normal aging of the battery over time as a control group.
The setup was identical for the Android smartphones. The iQOO7, which is not available in this country, was used once with the maximum possible 120 watts and once with 18 watts.
Self-programmed software charges the smartphones to 100 percent and then consumes the battery again until it reaches 5 percent. The charging process then starts again. Over several months, 500 charging cycles were conducted in this manner.
Does Fast Charging Harm Your Battery?
Before and after the experiment, the hobbyists examined the batteries. This is because not every smartphone comes from the factory with the same battery capacity. Small differences of less than one percent are possible. After 500 cycles, the batteries were examined again, and it was determined how much capacity they had lost:
- iPhone (slow charge): 11.8%
- iPhone (fast charge): 12.3%
- Android (slow charge): 8.8%
- Android (fast charge): 8.5%
The results are surprising. While the iPhone batteries lost 0.5 percent of their capacity due to faster charging, the batteries of Android smartphones even lost 0.3 percent less capacity. These differences can only be measured in the laboratory. Fast charging, therefore, has almost no effect on the service life of your battery.
How You Can Save Your Battery
Another battery myth suggests that batteries should be kept between 30 and 80 percent charged for the longest possible service life. Some smartphone manufacturers even offer a charging limit of 80 percent for their smartphones.
The Baster team also investigated this theory and charged another group of smartphones to 80 percent, then drained the battery to 30 percent. As this was only half a charging cycle, the experiment was repeated 1000 times.
- iPhone (30-80 percent): 8.3%
- Android (30-80 percent): 6.0%
So if you never charge your smartphone above 80 percent, you are actually doing your battery a small favor. But even here, the difference in everyday life is marginal. The experiment, therefore, shows that you should not invest too much time and effort in charging your smartphone and simply charge it when it suits you best.
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