A decade in the past, most of us had been annoyed each day by the period of time it took to cost our smartphones. Producers acknowledged that frustration and started to introduce numerous kinds of quick charging and speedy charging applied sciences. At the moment, you would possibly be capable of go from zero to virtually a full cost in about an hour, relying in your cellphone mannequin and the charger. However which will make you surprise should you’re damaging your cellphone’s battery. To seek out out if it does, GreatScott! constructed a cost and discharge testing rig.
There’s good purpose to be involved about quick charging. If that does not hurt the battery, then why did not smartphone producers benefit from it from the start? The battery chemistry (Lithium-Ion) is similar and it will have been trivial to construct compact chargers that output sufficient present a number of many years in the past. The reply could be within the charging methodology, with trendy quick chargers taking care to output energy in a approach that avoids harm. GreatScott! needed a concrete reply primarily based on actual experiments, he simply wanted a option to cost and discharge a bunch of batteries many instances.
GreatScott! needed to carry out 100 discharge/cost cycles for every of the six check batteries. Folks are inclined to cost their smartphones each evening, in order that simulated about 100 days of typical use. To carry out the check in an inexpensive period of time, GreatScott! constructed six charging stations. An Arduino Nano growth board controls every of these by a customized PCB, with a small OLED display screen exhibiting the voltage and variety of cost cycles at any given time. The discharge circuit attracts precisely 1A of present by an op-amp any time it’s energetic, changing the battery’s electrical energy into waste warmth.
The outcomes had been attention-grabbing. The batteries charged at the usual 1A of present had negligible degradation that fell inside an inexpensive margin of error. However the batteries quick charged at 5A confirmed a noticeable lower in capability. They misplaced a mean of 1.6% capability over these 100 cycles. Which may not sound like a lot, however it will develop into vital over the course of a few years if the speed of capability loss remained fixed. And GreatScott! suspects that the speed would really improve, which might make the issue way more extreme.
We would prefer to see extra assessments to find out how the speed of capability loss modifications. Nevertheless, it’s already affordable to conclude that you must keep away from quick charging when potential if you wish to lengthen the lifetime of your smartphone battery.