2 hours instead of 9 minutes. Why iPhone loses to Android smartphones due to charging speed

Let’s take a sober look. During charging, our gold iPhones are worth more than 100 thousand and collapse behind all the flagships and even the middling ones on Android.

The iPhone 15 Pro Max is designed for a maximum power supply of 27 W, and in this case it reaches 100% in a disastrous 2 hours 11 minutes. Wireless charging will take 4 hours via MagSafe and Qi2, which will deliver a maximum of 17 W.

Now evaluate the savings.

Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra Powers the battery up to 45 watts over the wire, delivering 57 minutes from zero to one hundred percent.

OPPO Find X5 Pro Compatible with AirVooc wireless charging with a power of 50W, which can handle an empty battery in 47 minutes, the power supply kit produces 80W and charges in 40 minutes.

How do you like it Xiaomi 14 Prowhich also supports the inductive method with a power of 50 W with a HyperCharge drive, and via wire it can be charged at 120 W and get 100% in… 18 minutes?

And now the control: Redmi Note 12 Discovery Edition With a 210W power supply it only takes 9 minutes to fully charge. This is not a joke, here’s a test.

What’s stopping Apple from doing the same? she fearfully avoids such power in this way, although manufacturers seem to have avoided problems with overheating, bloating and small capacity, why?

While I was looking for the reason, I came across some interesting ones. There are suggestions that Apple is not doesn’t want to, but can’t do it.

But we will start with the destruction of the main myth.

Let’s decide. So does fast charging harm batteries or not?

Yes and no. Depends on engineering solutions.

Simply put, there are three sections to any smartphone’s lithium-ion battery: the negative anode, the electrolyte separator, and the positive cathode. When the ions move from the negative side to the positive side through the separator, they generate power and thereby enable the smartphone to operate.

Over time, the separator crystallizes from the products of the cathode and anode, so there are fewer charge-generating ions, causing the battery to degrade.

Heating increases degradation. The higher the charging and discharging power, the greater the heating and the faster the battery deteriorates.

The purely mechanical answer to the question is yes, fast charging harms batteries. In the event that the heating has not been eliminated.

Nuba RedMagic 7S Pro with fan

Manufacturers have, of course, faced challenges, and their main part in speeding up charging is lowering temperatures.

To do this, OPPO included the hottest possible components in the power supply, and Xiaomi was the first to make batteries from two cells that charge in parallel. That is, it seems like the power is supplied at 80 W, but usually the power is charged at 40 W, which is much “cooler”. Other manufacturers use graphite plates and sometimes even microfans.

But methods to reduce heat also have disadvantages.

And we’ll start with the main thing, which in Cupertino is observed at literally any price.

Apple must comply with fire regulations of all measures

Where there is heat, there is fire.

The world will not forget the fiery and flagship Samsung Galaxy Note 7which Samsung recalled less than a month after the start of sales.

This is a domestic model of a smartphone, which is prohibited for air travel in the United States, even to private individuals, such as Hazardous Material. I still remember exactly the name of the model and photographs of the burnt-out car, more than 7 years have passed.

The cause was two different problems with batteries simultaneously from two different suppliers.

Samsung SDI batteries had plenty of space between the protective shell around the battery and its solid components.

Some batteries Amperex Technology Limited There were no insulating tapes, but there were sharp protrusions inside that violated the integrity of the separator between the anode and cathode. Remember this second company, we will return to it.

What does fast charging have to do with it, what do you say? Let me remind you that the higher its power, the stronger the heating.

It is the high oxidation temperature of the components in the battery that are in the gas production process that thereby increases the risk of increased expansion.

One of the reasons why the battery capacity of Apple smartphones is almost always smaller is because there is a lot of free space so that the battery can “breathe” freely in case of emergency. not to damage the body and yourself, which is generally natural for this element.

Apple clearly doesn’t want to become the second GTA V mod where the explosive model looks like a smartphone. After all, this is exactly what they did with the Galaxy Note 7. But neither the engineers nor the marketing department clearly forgot to reduce the capacity even further or make the smartphone even thicker.

Samsung lost $7 billion in market value in one day in 2016 when it recalled the Galaxy Note 7. It was one of three flagship smartphones at the time and one of the first the company had announced in the last 12 months.

Imagine what will happen to Apple, which claims its quality and releases all its popular models once a year?

But this is the only moment when the company was forced to keep its face.

The reputation of a stable manufacturer is deteriorating

Charging schedule for iPhone 8 Plus with different power. For current models the curves will be almost the same

Xiaomi’s stated permissible charging of 120 W via wire and 80 W inductively are peak values ​​that will quickly drop to the usual 15 W if the battery meets dangerous heating values.

That is, for the first 5-10 minutes you increased the declared power, and then the charging declined and slowed down. This is true for absolutely everyone.

As mentioned above, Apple must be extremely careful with batteries. Therefore, any head and “hot” load are reset by electrical control algorithms at the first opportunity.

For the same reason, compared with China, a faster decline in productivity will look like a failure, a setback, and will lead to thoughts like “why bother doing it if it doesn’t work?”

Any power test shows that the iPhone is noticeably “sinning” right now. And if the drop from 27 W to 7.5 W is not so noticeable, the drop from 80 W to the same figure will cause hysterics in the user.

It is also necessary to remember that for each new development, available technologies are taken into account.

There are no ready-made solutions, every man for himself

Meanwhile, all manufacturers are improving battery chemistry and controlling energy consumption, including Apple.

For example, the only supplier of iPhone batteries today announced that in early 2023 it began producing batteries with a new type of electrons – silicone instead of graphite, which increases the cell height by 10%. These innovations, however, are not a special achievement, and therefore our complaints about the charging speed and operating time remain unchanged.

Now I’ll tell you a secret. The same company whose batteries exploded in the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 has been producing batteries for Apple for 10 years: Amperex Technology Limited. She also offers them to Xiaomi, although the difference in technology is huge.

Essentially, battery manufacturers serve the same role as TSMC does with processors. In the field of advanced technologies, they do not provide ready-made solutions, but only create a custom component according to the company’s recipe.

Safe high-speed charging engineers largely implement this difficult method of charging the battery, powered by a more powerful adapter. Charging will soon be available for counters of completely different cells and chemistry, which our company has developed itself for its specific smartphone.

That is, if Apple is not talking about who to buy an assistant from, as it does with screens. The bottom line is who works which method without violating patents. And what disadvantages does this bring?

If you don’t want to overheat, use fast charging. Other victims

The battery in OPPO Find 5X Pro, although it charges up to 80% in 23 minutes, with its fast charging capacity. Apple banned such a trick from throwing away batteries and can barely breathe for one day.

OPPO’s 50W AirVooc wireless pad requires a compatible smartphone and features active cooling. It looks interesting, but Apple hates fans, and tries to move away from them as much as possible, even in laptops like the MacBook Air, which, in fact, is the company’s only computer without “air.”

In Xiaomi 14 Pro, a system of two cells allows you to charge them simultaneously, but this affects wear and tear – the smaller the battery, the faster oxidation processes will ruin its efficiency. Again, this also causes dissatisfaction in the iPhone, why make a problem.

In the case of OnePlus, when some of the components are included in the power supply for acceleration, this means that you need to sell it separately and explain the need for such an idea. The average user who buys an iPhone does not receive this bonus out of the box now, will not receive it again, and Apple will have to develop compliance with the requirements for absolutely every smartphone in order to make it larger and larger.

Apple could make terrible money, but it loves us more than money

OPPO 50W AIRVOOC Station Active Cooling Charger

We went to Cupertino for the sake of quick income, despite the fact that the company could have taken chips with high-speed charging from Chinese manufacturers and ignored all the shortcomings. The lifespan of an iPhone battery cannot be artificially extended, no matter how much you want and good food hygiene. Personally, I like experiments with energy saving, brightness, and background tasks. What’s wrong with them, that without this correction in a year the use of the resource will peak to 85% and nothing can be done about it.

Since such a consumable as a battery ages without a noticeable difference between uses, the next algorithms do not help it dramatically, safety standards can be seen from the Chinese, then the company could sacrifice operating time or cycle habits even more and let us refill it wirelessly in 50 minutes “tank”.

In terms of money, Apple provides such a cost-effective option. Power racks with the familiar name Apple MagSafe Charging Dock 50 W have been selling like hot cakes for years. And powerful power adapters would be available for them.

I suppose there is only one reason why this is not happening – the reputational risks of losing to Chinese smartphones in the direct direction of speed, setting your smartphone on fire, or getting another class action lawsuit are more dangerous than increasing revenue by half a percent.