Daily Authority: 🤔 Is fast charging pointless?

👋 Happy Monday! Nick here covering for Tristan while he recovers from an intense week of MWC. He’ll be back with you tomorrow.

The (pointless) charging speed wars heat up

One big narrative at MWC 2022 (and previous years, to be fair) was charging speeds. Several manufacturers, particularly Chinese brands like Oppo and Honor, have pushed the boundary to an absurd extent. Case in point: Oppo’s 240W SuperVooc concept, which it claims can charge a phone in 10 minutes.

But it’s all nonsense. There’s an excellent article laying out all the facts, but here it is in brief:

• First of all, wattage on the charger is never what you actually get in charging speeds on your phone, especially over time.
• Typically advertised speeds are only maintained for three or four minutes, or in the case of the Find X5 Pro and Galaxy S22 Ultra, less than a minute.
• Plus, if your phone is already above 25% battery, you’re going to see slower charging no matter what.
• Here’s a graph of charging speeds to give you an idea of what’s actually happening behind the scenes:

What’s really important is battery capacity, longevity, and consumer experience:

• High charging speeds are notoriously bad for battery health, reducing their lifespan with each charging cycle.
• Many of the fastest-charging phones drop to 80% capacity after 800 cycles, which is roughly two years of use.
• Some batteries perform better, but they typically take up more space in the phone, leading to lower overall capacities, and therefore less screen time.
• So essentially, you’re sacrificing an hour or more of screen time for 10 minutes of charging. Is that worth it?
• There’s also the very real problem of proprietary standards. If you don’t have your only fast-charging brick with you, you’re often left to deal with slow 10W charging anyway.
• And if you lose that charger? Expect to pay a pretty penny.

Roundup

📊 Samsung Galaxy S22 benchmarked: In-depth analysis of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 vs Exynos 2200. There are some surprising (and troubling) results (Android Authority).

🍰 It’s been 10 years since the Raspberry Pi launched. Here are five cool projects we’ve seen over the years (Android Authority).

Spotted on Reddit. Relatable memes aside, I love that this guy is also an incredibly talented writer/director and I can’t wait to see Nope in July.

Nick Fernandez, Editor.