Smartphone, does Fast Charging cause battery problems?

Fast charging technology is ideal for when you have little time to charge your smartphone but is it safe or can it damage the battery?

Among the smartphone features that manufacturers have been focusing on over the last few years is the drums. Not so much about features that can help increase battery life and cycle life but rather about allowing users to recharge the battery as much as possible in the shortest time possible. This is possible thanks to fast charging technology, or fast charging. There are several available on the market: Quick Charge by Qualcomm, HyperCharge by Xiaomi, SuperCharge by Huawei, VOOC by Oppo and others.

With ‘fast battery charging‘ basically refers to the fact that a battery can absorb more energy than the average standard through special adapter and charging cable, within the limits it can support to avoid burning. Because fast charging, as we will see below, generates more heat than normal speed charging. Manufacturers are therefore working on new technologies that offer the right balance between power and safety so as to put on the market batteries that support the absorption of greater power, so as to recharge more quickly, without forgetting safety, by integrating software algorithms into the device and heat dissipation systems.

Oppo, for example, last 2022 presented the prototype of its SuperVOOC 240W fast charging technology capable of recharging a 4500mAh battery in just 9 minutes. On the market you can already find the Realme GT 5 with fast charging via cable up to 240W. And then there are devices capable of offering fast charging at 100W, such as the Honor 90 GT. But these are extreme cases, because on average manufacturers are able to offer fast charging via cable between 30W and 50W. For example, Samsung’s top-of-the-range series today, the Galaxy S24, in the Plus and Ultra models supports up to 45W of fast charging via cable, while up to 15W in wireless mode.

Smartphone, what does it consist of Quick Charging smartphone battery

To understand the concept of fast charging you need to understand how it works standard charging. Without going into the technical, it is enough to know that when you connect the smartphone to an energy source, such as a battery charger or another device capable of powering from a USB port, the battery begins to absorb this energy within the limits of power it can support. Standard speed charging allows the battery to absorb 5W of power (he reports Belkin). Battery-powered devices that support fast charging can draw more watts of power. As a result, if you put more power into the battery it can charge more quickly.

Be careful though. The more power the battery absorbs, the more heat generated by the components it is made of increases. Because, as we explained in 2022, inside a lithium ion battery, while it is charging, the ions move between the negative and positive electrodes by means of electrolytic conduction. Activity that generates heat. There should be nothing to worry about. In fact, manufacturers adopt software solutions, such as absorbable power limiters, and hardware, such as heat dissipation systems, to avoid battery overheating.

In the challenge between those who are the first to introduce devices capable of recharging ever more quickly onto the market, which mainly involves Chinese smartphone suppliers, we must ask ourselves: are batteries that absorb an increasingly larger quantity of energy safe, even if supported by systems safety devices designed specifically? Certainly, before placing products on the market, they pass specific laboratory tests, so it can be assumed that they are safe. But there is another question on which to put the magnifying glass: Does fast charging risk accelerating the natural deterioration of the battery?. In fact, there are those who claim that fast charging puts stress on the battery, ending up damaging it. Or, even worse, it could cause a battery to explode.

There Fast charging Does it create problems and damage the battery?

In the Samsung online community there are several topics from users wondering whether to disable fast charging to extend the battery life of their phones. Let’s take Samsung as an example since it is the main supplier of Android devices but the concept can be extended to other players. Regardless, a community moderator responded:

“I can reassure you that the ultra-fast charging is perfectly designed so as not to accelerate the natural deterioration of the battery, so you can use it without worries.”

The ‘natural deterioration of the battery‘ is a reference to the fact that, as already explored in the past. After a certain number of charging cycles the lithium ion battery begins to lose its full 100% charging capacity. It has been estimated that, on average, the deterioration of a smartphone’s battery is around 20% after two years of use, resulting in it functioning at 80% of its original capacity. The problem is the lithium ions that form the basis of the production of batteries for smartphones. And so it is today and so it will be in the coming years, until new technologies for producing batteries for mobile devices become reality.

Although there is no absolute certainty, we can give credit to smartphone manufacturers in believing that fast charging does not cause damage to the battery. Of course you have to be careful to use official chargers and cables from the same manufacturer as the device. As regards the question of extending the life cycle of a battery, we refer you to the article which deals with this very topic. For those who still have doubts about fast charging, this technology can be disabled on most smartphones. On Samsung Galaxy devices, for example, just enter SettingsThen Device and Battery SupportThen DrumsThen Charging settings and disable ‘Fast charging‘.