The image is from GSM Arena. The phone Infinix has only 45W charge capability yet it does slightly faster than two other phones with much faster charging rates(and same battery capacity).
I know some phones throttle charging speeds but that is usually post 80% threshold. Why the discrepancy then?
I don’t understand that chart really, but charging speed is carefully controlled in the phone, based on monitoring the battery temperature among other things. They won’t charge from 0% to 80% at 100 watts even if they might hit 100W momentarily under the right conditions. Fast charging is hard on batteries anyway. Make sure you are ok with replacing the battery every so often, if you’re going to fast charge regularly.
Yep, this is it.
They are trading battery longevity for faster charging.
Personally, I generally prefer battery longevity, since that is the main factor that causes me to buy a new phone.
This is also the main reason I would like to buy a Fairphone for my next phone. I can get a new battery for $50 and replace it myself. And with 8-10 years of updates, I figure I can actually use it for 8 years with two battery replacements along the way.
It’s actually not entirely that simple, there are a bit more nuance in this. They definitely do trade a bit of battery longevity, but sacrificing longevity alone won’t give you 100W on a battery that typically can only do 45W, you will get it bursting into flame instead.
Rather, many of those Chinese phones that charge at super high power were double-cell or multi-cell designs. A multi-cell battery would allow you to reach much higher charging current under the same voltage while generating less heat due to lower resistance between terminals. But multi-cell batteries are inherently less space efficient than single cell batteries.
So they took different priorities and also traded space efficiency for charging speed, and of course this trade also means they have to trade other things to get back the space for battery, such as size of speakers (and therefore speaker audio quality) for example.
On the other hand many of those Chinese phones also don’t abide by standard protocols even way before PPS became a thing, and many of them required their own vendor’s proprietary charger to get the marketed charging speed, which have a VERY non-standard voltage, so that they can keep current low by raising voltage higher than standard USB/PD voltages, to keep the power high. This often also meant you need not only the vendor’s proprietary charger, but also their proprietary cable too because their non-standard charging voltage is also beyond the voltage that’s standard for USB cables. This principle is common now with PD chargers (like for charging a laptop for example), but they have been doing this way before PD protocol, so they have their own choices of voltage/current combos that are incompatible with PD protocol. And of course those Chinese companies like Xiaomi and Huawei would never give a flying F about complying to established industry standards and avoid vendor lock-in, customer rights be damned lol
Gonna be interesting to see which models disappear from EU altogether and which models get the better repairability and software updates next summer:
Ahh, I didn’t know it was already June next year.
Hopefully my current phone will last another year.
I hadn’t read the regs before. Interesting.
And while I very much agree with the intent (and will be glad to see it being much easier to replace a battery), I wonder what manufacturers will do to mitigate the impacts.
Like for the 7 years of parts thing, will they manufacture/sell a phone for just 3 months, to minimize that window?
I really like the OS support for 5 years. Again though, will they do things like charge for that support, tie the update package to a specific device, etc? (Guess we’ll see).
I’m not saying this isn’t a great improvement over the non-existent rules - it truly is! I’m just cynical, so I’m concerned to see how manufacturers will attempt to minimize the impact to them.
Good thinking, since a lot of those phones will be replaced for a shattered screen or cause they’re 1 year old.