A decade in the past, most of us had been annoyed every day by the period of time it took to cost our smartphones. Producers acknowledged that frustration and commenced to introduce numerous varieties of quick charging and speedy charging applied sciences. In the present day, you would possibly be capable to go from zero to nearly a full cost in about an hour, relying in your telephone mannequin and the charger. However that will make you marvel for those who’re damaging your telephone’s battery. To search out out if it does, GreatScott! constructed a cost and discharge testing rig.

There may be good purpose to be involved about quick charging. If that does not hurt the battery, then why did not smartphone producers reap the benefits of it from the start? The battery chemistry (Lithium-Ion) is similar and it might have been trivial to construct compact chargers that output sufficient present a number of a long time in the past. The reply is perhaps within the charging methodology, with fashionable quick chargers taking care to output energy in a manner that avoids harm. GreatScott! wished a concrete reply based mostly on actual experiments, he simply wanted a technique to cost and discharge a bunch of batteries many occasions.

GreatScott! wished to carry out 100 discharge/cost cycles for every of the six take a look at batteries. Individuals are likely to cost their smartphones each evening, in order that simulated about 100 days of typical use. To carry out the take a look at in an affordable period of time, GreatScott! constructed six charging stations. An Arduino Nano improvement board controls every of these by way of a customized PCB, with a small OLED display screen exhibiting the voltage and variety of cost cycles at any given time. The discharge circuit attracts precisely 1A of present by way of an op-amp any time it’s lively, changing the battery’s electrical energy into waste warmth.

The outcomes had been attention-grabbing. The batteries charged at the usual 1A of present had negligible degradation that fell inside an affordable margin of error. However the batteries quick charged at 5A confirmed a noticeable lower in capability. They misplaced a median of 1.6% capability over these 100 cycles. That may not sound like a lot, however it might develop into vital over the course of a few years if the speed of capability loss remained fixed. And GreatScott! suspects that the speed would truly improve, which might make the issue way more extreme.