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RIPstevejobs

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 5, 2011
155
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i always use the slower charger. my wife says use the fast one, its so fast. i always found the best quality juice to come from regular slower charger, apple charger only, and plugged into wall outlet only.
 
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When a lithium battery is charged slower, say to 80% then disconnected from the charger vs fast charging to 80%, (in this example) the battery that was charged slower will have a little longer total runtime compared to the battery that was fast charged.
So you might say that slow charging provides the best quality juice, but what’s actually happening is the battery can store electrons more efficiently when charged slower.
 
LOL. There's no "better" juice. Those are electrons, not fruits. It's not about the "quality" of the electrons, it's about the lithium battery chemistry/aging.

First, consider your own charging behavior first. If you are a person that simply charge your phone overnight everyday, just use a standard slow charger. You won't enjoy any benefits of a faster charger.

If you are a person that always use your phone 24/7, and often forget charging at night, fast charging can be very useful. Simply "fast charge" the phone anytime during the day, a few minutes here, 15 minutes there. In this situation, fast charging is very useful.

Personally, I'm the second. I'd just charge my phone whenever during the day, here and there. It never reaches 100%, but I don't need it to be. It hovers mostly around 40-70% at anytime of the day as I just charge it whenever.

The only charging I would avoid is wireless charging. Not only it's less efficient, it generates more heat, which is harmful to the battery itself.

But TL;DR, don't worry about it. At the end of the day, the lithium battery will probably need replacement after 2 to 3 years or so anyway due to aging (regardless of how you charge it). That's just how the chemistry work on today's battery tech. Most modern smartphones have smart charging capability as well as to not overcharge the battery. On my Samsung Galaxy S21, I can even set the phone to only charge up to 85%.
 
… lithium battery will probably need replacement after 2 to 3 years or so anyway due to aging (regardless of how you charge it). That's just how the chemistry work on today's battery tech.

That’s not true, here’s a 2.4yo XR @96% and if it’s anything like my previous iPhone5/iPad2 pair-up, it should still be capable of ~10hrs SOT ~7yo/2026.

Most modern smartphones have smart charging capability as well as to not overcharge the battery. On my Samsung Galaxy S21, I can even set the phone to only charge up to 85%.

Wish Apple would add two user-defined settings to its batt settings: 1) max charge limit and 2) commence charge time (but they’ll probably lose sales). Ah well, least they provide that functionality in shortcuts (+smartplug).
 
i always found the best quality juice to come from regular slower charger, apple charger only, and plugged into wall outlet only.
So you're saying the DC volts and amps from a slow charger are better than from a fast charger? ?
 
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That’s not true, here’s a 2.4yo XR @96% and if it’s anything like my previous iPhone5/iPad2 pair-up, it should still be capable of ~10hrs SOT ~7yo/2026.
That’s anecdotal. You cannot cheat the chemistry itself, and you cannot apply an anecdotal info as a general rule.

This is Apple’s words
Your battery is designed to retain up to 80% of its original capacity at 500 complete charge cycles.

That translates to generally between 1.5 to 3 years in retaining up to 80%. And the chemistry of lithium ion shows that below that, the behavior and output can be inconsistent. Your example is simply an outlier, and doesn't represent the general science behind lithium ion battery.
 
i always use the slower charger. my wife says use the fast one, its so fast. i always found the best quality juice to come from regular slower charger, apple charger only, and plugged into wall outlet only.
Sometimes this is all physiological as we want a battery that will be 90+% healthy after more than 6 years.

I'd do 30W fast charging in the car & 5W slow charging when charging overnight while I sleep
 
i always use the slower charger. my wife says use the fast one, its so fast. i always found the best quality juice to come from regular slower charger, apple charger only, and plugged into wall outlet only.
Wow there's a lot of interesting comments in this thread.

The "quality" of electricity from a 5w charger vs a 20w charger is no different when you're talking about wattage alone. However, 3rd party chargers can vary in quality significantly.

Some low quality 3rd party chargers are built with a lot of lossy components that leak power (you'll notice because they can be extremely hot with very little pull) - but that usually doesn't affect the quality of power to your device other than most likely being lower than rated (sometimes significantly) ex: Says it'll provide 30 watts, only provides 18 watts.

If you charge with 20w vs 5w, as long as it gets to a charged voltage level, it won't drain slower or faster because of how you charged it. What iPhone does do is not report the battery charge % level completely accurately especially the closer to 100% you get (can be off by +- 6%).
 
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Your battery is designed to retain up to 80% of its original capacity at 500 complete charge cycles.

Apple’s stated battery performance is solely stated for warranty purposes.
That statement is saying that the battery “should” last that long, not that it will only last that long.

I’ve got a 6 year old iPhone 6 Plus with over 1981 load cycles on it and the battery health is at 92.1%. (According to coconut battery).
Yes I babied it all those years.
 
That’s anecdotal. You cannot cheat the chemistry itself, and you cannot apply an anecdotal info as a general rule.

This is Apple’s words


That translates to generally between 1.5 to 3 years in retaining up to 80%. And the chemistry of lithium ion shows that below that, the behavior and output can be inconsistent. Your example is simply an outlier, and doesn't represent the general science behind lithium ion battery.


This is the ‘science’ I’ve been using for the past decade/3 iOS devices, and with other credible research that concurs. If you look at BattUniv Table 3, it’s in complete agreement with Apple’s statement… when regularly charging to 100%, that is.

What you are missing is that limiting the peak charge can render cycle-counts inconsequential, so only ~8-ish year time decay matters.

And just to preempt the nay-sayers, I’m not really ‘limiting capacity’ (that’s as much SOT as I can bear in a day)… rather, I’ll eventually/gradually increase charge level to offset time-decay - might take >6yrs to require 100% full charge for my ~8hrs avg SOT (IME). Also, no additional worry/hassles if you don’t want - a smartplug/shortcut ‘custom optimization’ can manage everything - just plug-in once/day and forget it like anyone else.
 
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