What is the most important for fast charging?

Fast-charging technology is one of the most exciting technological breakthroughs in mobile phones industry. Since the advent of this technology, the feature has become standard on flagship models of various mobile phone brands. Who wouldn’t want a smartphone that charges in minutes instead of hours? However, have you ever wondered what is the most important for fast charging? The charger, data cable or the cellphone itself.

To answer such a question, let’s go back to the technology itself.

In 2014, OPPO released its first fast charging cellphone find7. That can be charged at 5V/4A, the battery can be charged up to 75% in 30 minutes. This quickly became a sign that mobile phones entered the era of fast charging. Due to well-known reasons, others mobile phone manufacturers subsequently announced their own protocols and slap confusing labels on their charging tech.. Including Huawei SuperCharge, vivo Super FlashCharge, OnePlus Warp, etc.

But all fast charging protocols can be divided into three main categories: low voltage and high current, high voltage and low current, and dynamic adjustment of voltage and current. Current is the amount of electricity flowing from the battery to your phone, while voltage is the speed or strength of the current.

As the core of fast charging technology, charging protocols stipulates the framework for the cooperation of various accessories.

Charger

The main function of the charger is to provide the voltage and current for charging the mobile phone. To work normally, it is basic requirements to respect the charging protocol. You will find that the charger based on low voltage and high current has excellent performance under the corresponding protocol. But will slow down and disappoint you in high voltage and low current protocols. You need to pay more patience for the mismatch in charging protocols.

If the output voltage of the charger is 9V, but the charging protocol used by the mobile phone is based on a 5V/4A low-voltage and high-current solution, The charging speed will slow down charging and increase your wait time due to mismatch in protocols.

Generally, chargers will clearly indicate the fast charging it supports. Common ones are 9V/2A, 5V/4A, 5V/6A, 10V/2.25A, etc., as long as the charger and mobile phone support the same fast charging protocol, charging speed several times up.

Data cable

Compared with the charger, data cable is more like to be an energy pipeline. The transmission capacity of the pipeline determines the final output, and the quality and performance determine the loss in the transmission. Thus, the data cable affects the charging speed.

In the normal case, the maximum current an ordinary data cable can carry is 2A. You can also find a 5A or 6A charging cable, but this is mainly for mobile phones that use a low-voltage high-current fast charging protocols.

All in all, both charger and data cable need to work under the guidance of the charging protocol, to improving the charging speed, you need the cooperation of the mobile phone, the charger and the data cable. No single factor can boost speed of charging. Therefore, you need to pay more attention to the fast charging protocol that the product support.

Maybe we can look forward to the unification of the fast charging protocol for mobile phones in the future, by when we can make things simply and no longer need to consider different hardware products.