Earlier this week, we discussed how quick charging impacts battery capacity and asked you what pace you prefer. Fast charging has become the favoured way of charging, whereas overnight charging has obviously fallen out of favour.
Even though it was already on its way out a few years ago, a quarter of voters favoured it. The percentage has dropped from 25% to 15%. Slow charging has the advantage of always being an option; all you need to do is use one of the low-power chargers you already have. Even if you don’t have access to on-screen controls for charging speed, you can still keep a 5W/10W charger on your nightstand.
In the 25-33W range, most people will choose a phone. These charge quickly and have no drawbacks. Moreover, they don’t demand an additional fee like smartphones with the most advanced charging technologies.
Another interesting fact: phones that can charge at speeds of 100 watts or more came in second, well ahead of the 50-67 watt smartphones that came in third. For those who find the process of charging to be tedious, we can sympathise.
However, isn’t this bad for the battery? Even after hundreds of cycles, producers say they can expect it to retain about 80 percent of its initial capacity — some offer to equal the industry norm of 800 cycles; some even promise to exceed it twice. Keep in mind that 800 cycles is more than two years of daily charging from 0% to 100%.
Not to mention that many of the phones with fast charging are marketed as gaming phones. When compared to newer versions, a mobile GPU that is two years old will be significantly deficient in capabilities. In other words, even if the battery is brand new, the phone will no longer be a superb gaming phone.
This causes e-waste, which is a major concern. Even if you can locate someone to fix your phone if the battery dies, it may not be worth the repair cost these days. As long as batteries were user-accessible, replacing a dead battery was a 60-second process that didn’t necessitate any equipment.
Efforts have been made by the EU to bring it back. Consumer gadgets will be required to feature user-replaceable batteries that can be replaced with “simple and generally accessible tools” under new legislation. Additionally, the European Union is contemplating imposing criteria for how long phones should be supported – it might mandate 7 years of updates and replacement parts availability. When these two factors are coupled, battery life concerns can be put to rest. Of course, we’ll be watching to see how the manufacturers react to this.