You knew it was bound to happen. In our fast-paced world, the desire to charge a smartphone even faster has led to some super fast charging options. Now, instead of weighing the pros and cons of leaving your phone on its charger all night long, or trying to figure out when in the day you’ll have a free hour to charge your phone and not use it (answer: never), you can just plug it into one of the latest and greatest faster chargers and, minutes later, you have yourself a fully charged battery.
But is there a downside to fast charging? And can it have a negative effect on your battery when all is said and done? Here’s what tech experts have to say.
Fast Charging Is Safe
The biggest worry about fast charging is that it will cause your phone to overheat because it’s being powered up rapidly. As we know, extreme heat or cold is one major cause of battery degradation.
But here’s why you needn’t worry about fast charging and your battery: the lithium-ion battery that’s powering your iPhone or Android today is NOT the same version of the battery that caused these worries several years ago when you’d hear of so-and-so’s phone exploding from overheating.
Today’s iPhone battery is smaller, more advanced, and more efficient overall. They can take on longer charging cycles, repeated, and are better able to withstand becoming depleted, being powered back up, and on and on.
Over time, every phone battery degrades — that’s just the nature of a battery. And exposure to heat can cause that degradation to speed up. But today’s phones are stocked with tech advancements that can help control heat and the power flow from your charger. In addition to features like cooling pipes and heat shields, your phone may have settings that you can enable to slow down the battery’s depletion (such as Low Power Mode on an iPhone).
In short: there’s no reason to be scared of fast charging options. Take advantage of them if you’d like, and try to take other steps to keep your phone’s temperature steady and to slow down your battery drainage.
