Charging
speed and cable length were among the criteria that manufacturers of wired
chargers for phones, whether Lightning, USB-C, or Micro-USB, to meet the needs
of users who naturally do not want to wait for long periods before their phone
batteries are fully charged They also like that the cords of phone chargers
come with appropriate lengths that allow them to use the phone during the
charging process when needed without having to stay very close to the power
socket, and indeed chargers now come in large lengths starting from one meter
and up to 10 feet (that is, more than 3 meters). ).
It is true
that the length of the charger cord is not an advantage in all cases, but it
allows comfortable use of devices while recharging their batteries, but it
takes longer to recharge these batteries, and then achieving this requirement
interferes with achieving the other requirement of fast charging batteries.
In recent
years, the need for smartphone users to use chargers with long wires has
decreased with the advent of wireless chargers that have solved the problem of
staying close to the power socket. Some companies producing smartphones have
for some time refused to offer such chargers for their phones, citing the fact
that it is an impractical type of phone charger, such as Apple, which
eventually acquiesced and released 2017 the iPhone X and 8 Plus as the first
versions of its phones that can Recharge its battery through a wireless
charger. But does the use of this type of charger in turn affect the speed of
the charging process? In other words, is the process of recharging the phone
battery through wired chargers as quickly as recharging it through wireless
chargers? Let us answer this question in the following lines.
How does the phone battery recharge?
Most
smartphones today use rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, which provide a
number of great advantages to their users such as small size, large capacity,
and the ability to obtain from them very high voltages of up to 3.6 volts, in
addition to their high efficiency and long life, as their relatively long They
do not suffer from memory effect and have a low self-discharge rate compared to
some other types of batteries. In order to be able to recharge any battery in
the traditional wired way, it is necessary to have a source of alternating
current, such as an electrical socket, and a charger that matches the type of
that battery, and we also need to have an appropriate entrance through which we
can connect the battery to the charger.
As soon as
the phone is connected to the power source through the charger, the charging
process begins, and the electricity flows into the battery and reverses the
chemical reactions that occurred inside the battery during its use and
discharge of energy. In the case of a lithium-ion battery, the battery
discharges its energy during use through the transfer of lithium ions from the
negative terminal of the battery to the positive terminal of the battery, and
thus; To recharge the battery, the lithium ions must be re-accumulated at the
negative terminal of the battery. Good chargers usually pass a small amount of
current into the battery, between 3-5% of the maximum current value that the
battery can handle, keeping it safe for as long as possible.
Wired chargers
consist of a step-down electrical transformer and a cable that contains a
number of wires of equal cross-sectional area, which are mostly made of copper
materials. The charger transformer works according to what is known as
Faraday's law of electromagnetic induction, which describes the effect of
mutual induction between two coils.
When the two
ends of the primary winding of the transformer are connected to an alternating
current source, the passage of a changing current inside the coil is accompanied
by a changing electromagnetic field. The secondary winding is such that the
induced current is proportional to the original current passing through the
primary winding of the transformer. This current exits at the end of the
charger adapter through the cable to charge the battery.
The idea of
wireless chargers working is not much different from their wired counterparts
except that they use air as an alternative to the copper wire charger cable to
wirelessly transmit electricity to devices through two additional coils, one of
which acts as an antenna, which is the transmitting coil located in the
charging plate on which the phone is installed. This coil, by inductive
resonance coupling, sends an electromagnetic field to be received by another
smaller coil located inside the phone at the resonance frequency, and then the
circuit of this smaller coil converts the electromagnetic field that it picked
up into an induced electric current that works to charge the battery.
Ways to speed up the charging of the phone battery through wired chargers
Manufacturers
of phone battery chargers have been keen to develop fast charging technologies
so that they take as short a time as possible to perform their work in fully
charging the batteries, which increases the desire of users to buy the product,
either by increasing the current entering the battery or increasing the effort,
both of which work on Increase the amount of electrical energy stored by the
battery. Most fast charging technologies today involve increasing the value of
the voltage rather than increasing the value of the current.
There are
many other ways that can help smartphone users charge their phones using wired
chargers as quickly as possible, including replacing the normal chargers that
come with phone accessories when buying with newer versions of chargers
compatible with the device; For example, the basic iPhone 8 charger with a
5-watt charging capacity can be replaced with the 20W USB-C charger provided by
Apple, which is also compatible with the phone model. To two and a half times
or three times the speed of charging it using the original charger that comes
with the device accessories.
Is the speed of wireless chargers different from wired chargers?
The charging
speed of batteries for phones and other devices depends on many factors; Such
as the type of device or type of phone, the type of battery used, the capacity
of this battery, the power of the charger adapter, in addition to some other
factors such as the quality of the charger cable, the thickness of the wires
inside the cable in the case of wired chargers, or the distance that separates
the transmission coil in the charging plate from a coil The reception in the
phone for wireless chargers, the farther the distance between the transmitting
coil and the phone, the electromagnetic field lines find it difficult to reach
the receiving coil and the charging process is slower, and therefore the
wireless phone charging speed reaches its maximum limits when the phone’s
receiving coil is placed next to the transmission coil on the panel Shipping.
Of course, it
is possible to overcome this obstacle by designing larger transmission coils,
but this method remains limited by design limitations, as using a larger
transmitting coil in the charging pad will need to place a larger receiving
coil in the phone as well, which is not desirable in the design of phones and
leads to Increase the final size of the phone.
In general,
the speed of charging smartphone batteries through wireless chargers is much
slower compared to conventional wired chargers, as it can reach almost half of
its speed. It took the iPhone XR battery, for example, to power to 50% of its
capacity. After being completely discharged for half an hour when charged using
a standard wired charger, the same process took a full hour when charged using
a standard wireless charger compatible with the battery.
Fast charging
with wired chargers, especially those using USB-C cables, is still the fastest
way to charge compatible smartphone batteries. In spite of this, with the
development of technology, and as is the case with the fast charging methods
that were made available for wired chargers, there are fast ways to charge
phone batteries wirelessly, although the fast wireless charging methods
equivalent to fast charging methods using wired chargers are still not
available for all phones so far. But the near future promises a lot when it
comes to fast wireless charging technologies.
In the end,
the reader may wonder what is the best. Does he use wireless chargers or wired
chargers?
what is the best? Wired or wireless chargers?
Both types of
chargers provide some advantages that the user may prefer at times, and then he
alone has to choose between them according to his requirements. While fast
charging with wired chargers is ideal when you want to recharge your phone's
battery after a long day's work, and in no time before you're ready to leave
the house again, on the other hand, you may find that wireless chargers are
easy to use and give a sense of comfort. All you have to do is place your phone
on the charging pad to start recharging the battery without having to drown in
a clutter of cables, worry about wires being pulled out, or have to stay near a
power socket.
With wireless
chargers, you can keep your phone handy at the dining table while you eat
dinner, or at your desk at work while its battery is being replenished. The
ideal and recommended option is to trade between the use of both types and take
advantage of the advantages that each of them offers, but in the event that
this is not possible, it is inevitable to charge using wired chargers, as they
are small in size, practical and light in weight that can be carried with you
easily to anywhere during travel in addition to the advantage Charging speed,
but note, dear reader, that you cannot connect both types of chargers to the
phone at the same time, thinking that this will help increase the speed of
charging the battery, this method will not work for you anyway
Summary | The
charging speed of phones in the case of charging using conventional wired
chargers differs from that in the case of using wireless chargers. It is about
half slower in the case of wireless chargers, in which the charging speed of
the battery depends on the distance traveled by the electromagnetic field lines
coming out of the transmitting coil located inside the charging plate and
directed to the coil The receiver in the phone whose battery is to be charged
with energy, which captures this electromagnetic energy and turns it into the
electric current needed to charge the battery. However, the speed of charging
batteries wirelessly can increase in some modern phones that use fast wireless
charging methods, but these technologies are still not available for all types
of smartphones.