The Importance of Fast and Universal Charging for Smartphones to Laptops
Oct 04, 2019 06:13
New tech devices are released each year. Smartphones, tablets, and laptops are the main tech devices that many people are eagerly looking out for, as these are the types of devices that are most accessible and we have the most use for. Along with the release of new devices, it also means that they become more powerful. In this case, we’re going to be using smartphones as an example because phones are one tech device that are the most anticipated each year, and the ones that also make the most progress in terms of performance, too.
Taking a look at smartphones, each brand releases their new one each year. The two main brands that have the most eyes on them are almost always Samsung and Apple. However, they’re not the only two behemoths that deserve all the attention as you’ve got brands such as LG, Asus, HTC (not really the brand that it used to be), Motorola, Sony and of course, OnePlus, a brand that has been making strides in recent years and has actually managed to find its way onto a carrier such as TMobile.
No matter what the brand size, these companies are releasing new phones and people are going to buy them and with the new tech comes very many positives. At the same time, there’s also a hidden downside that more people should be aware of and the solution to the downside should be known, too.
In this case, every year new phones have better screens, faster processors, they have more RAM with phones now having 6GB to 8GB, and the cameras they have are becoming a lot better now, too. The iPhone 11 is a great example of that with its use of three cameras and how it’s the highlight of the phone for this year. With all these better specs, phones are also using a lot more power to run themselves, and that’s why they also feature larger batteries.
Not only that, another two new factors are now going to start using more power, and that would be the use of a faster refresh rate for screens and also the use of 5G.
Larger batteries are great, but they also take longer to recharge, so the solution to this negative situation is to use a fast charger. What the world needs is a universal fast charger, and so we’re no longer just talking about smartphones here.
One fast charging method that many people might know, or at least Android owners should know, is Quick Charge. That’s because the charging tech is compatible with most Android smartphones and most phones come with a Quick Charge wall charger, to begin with. The major flaw here is that Quick Charge is not all that power even if it were to charge laptops, and secondly, the charging tech is not compatible with any other type of device.
What can be the future of charging is known as USB-C Power Delivery charging.
If you own an Android smartphone then you probably know what USB-C is, and if you don’t, well, it’s the new standard port that is now being used with many devices these days. One very recent example at the time of writing this article is that Microsft just had their event showcasing what new devices they’ve got for the holiday season. The Surface Laptop 3, Surface Pro 7 and the Surface Pro X, all make use of a USB-C port. This is a major change because it acts as a more accessible way for users to charge these devices and also to connect to them. It’s not only the fact that these devices make use of USB-C ports, and it’s also that they’re Power Delivery compatible, so you’re able to fast charge them with a PD charger.
The USB-C port is now the standard port that’s used on all Android phones, too. Micro-USB is a thing of the past.
It’s also the devices that don’t even have a USB-C port, that is also using PD. The iPhone is one of them, as it still uses a Lightning port. With that said, the phone can still be charged using a USB-C Power Delivery port when you use a Type-C to Lightning cable. This has been the case ever since the release of the iPhone 8 and the iPhone X. The reason that most people don’t know that is because Apple always ships their phone with a slow 5W charger until now that is.
If you get the iPhone 11 Pro or the 11 Pro Max, you get an 18W USB-C Power Delivery wall charger with your iPhone 11, and a Lightning to C charging cable, too.
The highlight of Power Delivery charging is how it can be a universal way to charge your devices. If you have a USB-C laptop, tablet, and smartphone, then you can use the same charger to charge all of them. To charge all of them, you have to start with a powerful charger such as a 30W or 60W PD charger as most laptops require that much power, but even with a 60W, you can use it to charge your smartphone.
Two features that are becoming more common with PD chargers is their use of Gallium Nitride (GaN) chips and how they allocate charging power, also known as Dynamic charging.
With GaN chips, they take the place of many parts within a charger, and yet they can still output just as much power as the parts they replaced. The result is a charger that is small in size but very powerful. Dynamic charging on the other is a Power Delivery charger that has two PD ports, which is not all that common.
The Dynamic part for these types of chargers is that if you have two devices charging, each of the ports will output a lower amount of power, let’s say 18W. Then if you have only one device charging from this PD charger, you can get 36W of charging power, and therefore you can charge your laptop at a faster-charging speed, just because you unplugged one of the devices that you were charging.
