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Experiment - Fastest way to charge iPhone 6s+

Cergman

Cergman

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 1, 2013
852
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my tesla
Pretty much everyone knows an iPad charger will charge an iPhone faster than the standard 5W one that comes with iPhones, but I haven't seen any quantifiable evidence that shows how much faster it charges. So, I decided to test the standard 5W charger, a 10W charger from an iPad Air 2, and a 12W charger from an iPad Pro to see how significant the difference is.

The testing dummy is a TSMC iPhone 6s Plus with ~12 charge cycles. Even though the phone is fairly new, it's been loaded with a backup that's been in use for about 11 months. For each test, the display will be powered ON, albeit with auto lock disabled, airplane mode enabled, auto brightness disabled, and the brightness set to the lowest level.

As soon as the phone hit 1% AND 0 mAh, I ran the custom app I built and plugged the phone in. Without further ado, here are the results! It looks like 10W and 12W charger are just about the same, accounting for margin of error. However, either iPad charger is about a third faster than the standard iPhone one!

Hopefully this was informative! For those interested, you can find the raw data here.
 

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Thank you for the information. Does anybody know if the 6s charges faster on an iPad charger? I have both and haven't really noticed any change in charging speed. When I had the 6 and 6+ the iPad charger did decrease charging time on those phones, but just doesn't seem to work for my 6s. Tested with stock cable of course.
 
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bhayes444 said:
Thank you for the information. Does anybody know if the 6s charges faster on an iPad charger? I have both and haven't really noticed any change in charging speed. When I had the 6 and 6+ the iPad charger did decrease charging time on those phones, but just doesn't seem to work for my 6s. Tested with stock cable of course.
Click to expand...

I use a 12watt charger with my 6s, but I don't really notice an increase in speed. When I check Coconut battery to see the charge rate, it hardly ever breaks 4watts, unlike my Air 2 which I have seen break 9watts. So I honestly don't think it charges any faster.
 
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Mlrollin91 said:
I use a 12watt charger with my 6s, but I don't really notice an increase in speed. When I check Coconut battery to see the charge rate, it hardly ever breaks 4watts, unlike my Air 2 which I have seen break 9watts. So I honestly don't think it charges any faster.
Click to expand...
FWIW, my 6s+ is charging at exactly 6.0watts according to coconutBattery.
 
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Cergman said:
FWIW, my 6s+ is charging at exactly 6.0watts according to coconutBattery.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I just get the feeling that Apple "turned off" the fast charging capability for the regular 6s. Maybe I'm wrong. It just feels odd the 6, 6+, and 6s+ seem to get a slight boost in speed using that iPad charger and the 6s doesn't. Wonder if the SE is in the same boat as the 6s?
 
bhayes444 said:
Yeah, I just get the feeling that Apple "turned off" the fast charging capability for the regular 6s. Maybe I'm wrong. It just feels odd the 6, 6+, and 6s+ seem to get a slight boost in speed using that iPad charger and the 6s doesn't. Wonder if the SE is in the same boat as the 6s?
Click to expand...
My SE is coming in at 4.0watts, which seems fairly similar to what you're getting with your 6s. My guess is they both use the same charging circuitry.

BLUEBLASTER said:
I've never tried it but I got told it affects the battery durability.
Click to expand...
Apple lists the iPad chargers as compatible with all iPhone models, so I can't imagine using one would damage an iPhone in any way.
 
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BLUEBLASTER said:
I've never tried it but I got told it affects the battery durability.
Click to expand...
The devices control how much power they take on to charge, so the chargers themselves won't really damage the devices or the battery (short of them being bad in some way and causing some sort of power spikes or something weird like that).
 
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Cergman said:
My SE is coming in at 4.0watts, which seems fairly similar to what you're getting with your 6s. My guess is they both use the same charging circuitry.
Click to expand...
Okay, thank you. I wonder why they use different charging circuitry (presumably) on the smaller phones? I guess they have their reasons.
 
The power adapters are transformers that turn 120VAC 60 Hz and 240VAC 50 Hz into 5VDc.

They are NOT chargers, they are transformers.

The charger in all iPhones is inside the iPhone itself. The internal charger will regulate how much current, Amps it draws from the power adapter based on the charge level of the battery.

Using an iPad power adapter you will see on average one percent battery level increase for every minute you are attached when battery level is between 0-70%

After that the internal charger will begin to reduce amps till it is trickle charging on and off at 100%

If you want to absolutely maximize your Li ion battery life keep the battery between 40% and 60% that should get you 10 years of life assuming no defect in battery. Of course this means you will have to carry a power adapter and cable everywhere you go for next 10 years. Never letting phone go below 40% and not charging above 60%

Or just charge it like Apple recommends, any time, to any level, and battery will be at about 80% capacity after two to three years. At which point you will most likely get the newest iPhone. Apple made it pretty much consumer idiot proof. Just use Apple cable and Apple power adapter and charge it any way you like.
 
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The iPad charger does charge my 6S+ a little quicker and have been using it to charge my iPhones for years now. It really matters not as I charge my iPhone at night while sleeping and the speed is not important.
 
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HEK said:
Oweeeee .......that hurts they are not chargers. Not a charging circuit in them

TRANSFORMERS or in Apple speak. POWER ADAPTERS
Click to expand...
Not to derail the thread but Power Adapter or AC/DC Convertor is the better term since there is additional circuitry required beyond a transformer to change the input 120VAC to 5VDC.
 
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Very cool post OP - thanks for taking the time to do this. Interesting how the 10w charger was a little faster for a few percentages.

I notice my Anker battery bricks will charge the phone pretty fast (3.8a+ vs 12w iPad charger (2.4a)). Would be fun to run them with this test. Was there a lot of coding involved to run this? Would you be interested in sharing the code? No worries if not, thanks for your post!

LOL @ last 4 posts. :D
 
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Did you try to see if there is a difference between the cables?
The ipad pro cable is much longer but also much thicker than the iphone cable that comes with it.
 
Kiro said:
Did you try to see if there is a difference between the cables?
The ipad pro cable is much longer but also much thicker than the iphone cable that comes with it.
Click to expand...
I actually used the 2m iPad Pro cable for all the tests. I doubt there would be much of a difference, but you're welcome to try :p

BigMcGuire said:
Very cool post OP - thanks for taking the time to do this. Interesting how the 10w charger was a little faster for a few percentages.

I notice my Anker battery bricks will charge the phone pretty fast (3.8a+ vs 12w iPad charger (2.4a)). Would be fun to run them with this test. Was there a lot of coding involved to run this? Would you be interested in sharing the code? No worries if not, thanks for your post!

LOL @ last 4 posts. :D
Click to expand...
Not a whole lot of code. I'll see if I can package it up and share it with you guys to play with.
 
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I posted the source files in this google drive folder. It's not very robust, but it does its job well.

The runner will automatically start once the device is plugged in, and the app must remain open to keep collecting data. Make sure you export as csv before you quit the app, as the data is only stored in memory.
 
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out of curiosity, do you have a 6s to run this on? b/c the 6s seems to have a disparity in this regard. when I do a test comparison, it charges pretty much the same for a 5w vs 12w.
 
tennisproha said:
out of curiosity, do you have a 6s to run this on? b/c the 6s seems to have a disparity in this regard. when I do a test comparison, it charges pretty much the same for a 5w vs 12w.
Click to expand...
I have a 6 and 6s+, but no regular 6s. I could give it a shot on the 6 and see what the results are if you'd like!
 
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