Tested: What's the Fastest-Charging Phone?

[Alex Cranz]

We measured the charge percentage of seven popular phones at various times and factored in battery capacity to declare a winner.

Tested: What's the Fastest-Charging Phone? : Read more

 

[sandals]

I own a Zenphone 2, and (as this test showed) it does charge very fast when hooked up to the included powerbrick. But when it is hooked up to a "regular" brick or a PC USB port... it charges V E R Y S L O W L Y.... if at all. So keep that in mind.

 

[loopyduck]

Hang on. From the test, it seemed like you used a QuickCharge brick with the LG G4, even though the G4 doesn't come with one. Therefore, a real-life owner would need to buy the charger separately.

On the other hand, from your description it seems you used the 5 volt/1 amp (NOT 1.5 amp) brick that comes with the iPhone 6. However, the iPhone 6 will charge at a quicker rate if you use the 5 volt/ 2.1/2.4 amp iPad charger. Why didn't you test it with one of those?

 

[Tom425]

The reason why it takes so long to charge these phones from 80% to 100% is well-understood: rapidly charging a battery when it's nearly full is bad for it. In fact, rapidly charging a battery at all is not great for it.

Check out Tesla's page on their Superchargers, in particular the "Supercharger Charging Profile" towards the bottom:

http/www.teslamotors.com/supercharger

Also note that Tesla discourages frequent use of Superchargers.

It is interesting to know which phones charge the fastest--certainly a fast charge time is convenient. But I wonder how it affects battery longevity. Instead of having inferior battery or charging technology, I wonder if Apple doesn't slow down charging on purpose to maximize battery longevity.

 

[Konrad85]

As suggested loopyduck, why didn't you use the manufacturer's charger? A comparison between both would be nice and this second one more realistic.

For example, my Oppo Find 7a comes with a 4.5A charger, and the phone charges 0-75% in 30 min (which becames 80% starting from 5%): quite more than 53%, and the phone is one year old 😉

Reading your comparison, I notice that Oppo is still the fastest to charge phone. Battery is 2,8Ah 😉

 

[RodgerTDodger]

Totally agree with Konrad85. I have an Oppo Find7 and the VOOC car charger i bought for my commute to the office means i rarely plug it in to charge when at home. Android Authority did this piece on VOOC http/www.androidauthority.com/oppo-vooc-flash-charge-596939/

 

[wtflmao]

Agree with loopyduck. It is very unclear as to what charger you used with the iphone 6. The implication is that you used a "standard" 5v/1.5A charger with it, but as loopyduck says the higher power 12W adaptor is freely available on the apple store and offers a faster charge than the standard charger. It is certified by apple to be used with the iPhone.

If you are charging the g4 with the optional higher wattage brick you should do the same for the iphone.

From my own tests mimicking your methodology a 12W power brick the iphone 6plus charges to 48% at 30 minutes.

Please consider updating this article with the higher wattage charger

 

[Sebastian_1]

Are You actually kidding me? Having read this article, I'm sad.

It's clear to me that the author tested other phones just to mock iPhone 6/6+ standard charger. Results clearly show that he's using standard 5W charger with iPhones. Duh.

 

[Alex Cranz]

I own a Zenphone 2, and (as this test showed) it does charge very fast when hooked up to the included powerbrick. But when it is hooked up to a "regular" brick or a PC USB port... it charges V E R Y S L O W L Y.... if at all. So keep that in mind.

Definitely agree!

For an explanation note the size of the Zenfone 2 brick versus a traditional 5v/1.5A brick as found with the iPhone. The Zenphone delivers 18 watts of energy and a traditional brick delivers just 7.5 watts. So when you plug the Zenfone 2 into a regular brick you're giving it less than half of the juice it needs.

 

[Alex Cranz]

Hang on. From the test, it seemed like you used a QuickCharge brick with the LG G4, even though the G4 doesn't come with one. Therefore, a real-life owner would need to buy the charger separately.

On the other hand, from your description it seems you used the 5 volt/1 amp (NOT 1.5 amp) brick that comes with the iPhone 6. However, the iPhone 6 will charge at a quicker rate if you use the 5 volt/ 2.1/2.4 amp iPad charger. Why didn't you test it with one of those?

With the exception of the G4 we tested each phone using the included charger. The G4 was included to give us a broader spread of QuickCharge capable phones.

As for the iPhone, as a giant Mac nerd myself I'm very eager to check out it's charging speed with other chargers. In fact that's a story that will likely show up here very soon. So stay tuned!

 

[Rigorkrad]

the iPhone 6 specifically asks for 5v@2100 ma if it is available. 5v @ 2100 is 4.2 times usb 2 current. it might ask for more. because of this fact i would like to know the tests results are when you use the iPad charger or the mac book pro usb port. you can see the extra current being delivered to your apple gadgets by connecting them to a current mac ( 2010 or later ) and going to system report - usb it will say
current requested 500ma
current required 500ma
extra operating current 1600ma
i forgot what the iPhone 5 asks for.
a lot of people seem to have forgot the story about how Steve Jobs knew usb 2 power was not enough to charge or keep an iPad running. and because of this, he specifically designed HIS usb ports to delver 2100ma. this one of the major differences between your standard ibm compatible usb 2 port and your macintosh usb port.
if you have an iPod 4th gen connected to a mac of 2010 or later you will only see 1000ma. which is still 2 x usb current

 

[Alex Cranz]

the iPhone 6 specifically asks for 5v@2100 ma if it is available. 5v @ 2100 is 4.2 times usb 2 current. it might ask for more. because of this fact i would like to know the tests results are when you use the iPad charger or the mac book pro usb port. you can see the extra current being delivered to your apple gadgets by connecting them to a current mac ( 2010 or later ) and going to system report - usb it will say
current requested 500ma
current required 500ma
extra operating current 1600ma
i forgot what the iPhone 5 asks for.
a lot of people seem to have forgot the story about how Steve Jobs knew usb 2 power was not enough to charge or keep an iPad running. and because of this, he specifically designed HIS usb ports to delver 2100ma. this one of the major differences between your standard ibm compatible usb 2 port and your macintosh usb port.
if you have an iPod 4th gen connected to a mac of 2010 or later you will only see 1000ma. which is still 2 x usb current

The iPhone's ability to handle a faster charge was discussed, but we settled on using it's out of box charger for this initial test. There are plans on doing a whole other story focusing exclusively on the iPhone and it's ability to charge faster with an appropriate brick. So definitely stay tuned!

 

[borgqueen]

I understand the problem of bigger battery capacity’s and therefore it wouldn’t be fair to judge the manufacture by a percentage of charge per time cause a lower percentage value could still mean there is more energy in the battery.

So generally your test doesn’t make much sense cause if my battery is charged in 1 hour or 3 hours is irrelevant as long as I don’t know how much runtime I get per charge time.

But your unit mA/m (milliamps per minute) confuses me more than helps.
What should mA/m (milliamps per minute) be?

Amperes are charges per second so we have current twice per time?
I think you want to get a value how much energy a charging adapter can deliver to the battery per time. But that wouldn’t have much force of expression, cause for a small amount of time there can always be transferred much energy especially in the first 15 minutes where the battery is cold, you have to take into account the full charging cycle. Aside from that the output energy of the charging adapter doesn’t have to be stored into chemical energy it can dissipate in heat from the battery.

It’s difficult to measure how much energy is flown (and stored) into the battery.
But if you want, you should be aware that measuring the current (Amperes) isn’t sufficient. The energy is composed out of the current, the voltage at which the current flows and the time.

 

[Silvio6]

I charge my iphone6 with the ipad charger since 8 months. I never had to wait more than roughly 1 hour for a full charge. That's after i turn it off for a faster charge.
Most people don't know that, you guys can do the buzz if you explain how to fully charge an iphone 6 in little time. As most people use the small charger and keep the phone on.
If you can't live without it for an hour, there's the option to use flight mode, but it will charge slower if you use the screen.

 

[Konrad85]

Here my results, charging Oppo Find 7a with his VOOC:
5 min: 3% to 17% = 14%
15 min: 3% to 41% = 38%
20 min: 3% to 55% = 52%
30 min: 78%.

It proves that Oppo's telling the truth, and that the first 75% is charged at around 2.5% per minute (almost 3% the first minutes).

14% + 5% from which starts the test decrees Oppo Find 7a, with 2.8Ah battery, a the best with 19%. 79 Amps per minute the first 5 minutes. Ending on around 70 Amps/min.

 

[Alex Cranz]

I understand the problem of bigger battery capacity’s and therefore it wouldn’t be fair to judge the manufacture by a percentage of charge per time cause a lower percentage value could still mean there is more energy in the battery.

So generally your test doesn’t make much sense cause if my battery is charged in 1 hour or 3 hours is irrelevant as long as I don’t know how much runtime I get per charge time.

But your unit mA/m (milliamps per minute) confuses me more than helps.
What should mA/m (milliamps per minute) be?

Amperes are charges per second so we have current twice per time?
I think you want to get a value how much energy a charging adapter can deliver to the battery per time. But that wouldn’t have much force of expression, cause for a small amount of time there can always be transferred much energy especially in the first 15 minutes where the battery is cold, you have to take into account the full charging cycle. Aside from that the output energy of the charging adapter doesn’t have to be stored into chemical energy it can dissipate in heat from the battery.

It’s difficult to measure how much energy is flown (and stored) into the battery.
But if you want, you should be aware that measuring the current (Amperes) isn’t sufficient. The energy is composed out of the current, the voltage at which the current flows and the time.

We discussed taking into account the runtime of the phone on a usual charge, but we ran into issues. A lot of things affect how energy is consumed by the phone (including the mentioned heat or cold). In particular we've noticed that carrier choice actually affects battery life.

In the interest of fairness we opted to consider a different measurement of efficiency. So we considered how fast a battery charges in relation to how large the battery of the device is. This led to using the term milliamps per minute.

 

[Tom425]

We discussed taking into account the runtime of the phone on a usual charge, but we ran into issues. A lot of things affect how energy is consumed by the phone (including the mentioned heat or cold). In particular we've noticed that carrier choice actually affects battery life.
...

Of course it does. Carriers have towers in different locations and it takes more power to communicate with a tower that's further away. That's why your phone runs out of power so quickly when you spend the day hiking or camping.