Switching phone charger

jaffacakes · January 3, 2017

Hello,

I've got a P8 Lite and the stock charger is a 1.0A one.

Would I be fine switching to a 2.4A one? Will it damage the battery overtime?

Cheers.

spellmanuk · January 3, 2017

you should be fine however, there may be some effect on the battery over time yes but not much more than would happen anyway

Narnash · January 3, 2017

A bit btw background info:

At how much the battery get charged is regualated by the charging circuit and not the PSU. The PSUs "A" rating just say which Amparage the PSU is max. capable of, to run on a lower A is fine.

BTW the Voltage on the otherhand when using a 3rd party PSU on any device should be roughly the same (my rule of thumb is for not critical circuits max +/- 10% of rated voltage for complexer stuff not more than +/- 5% of the rated voltage), otherwise it my fry your device

Since the charging rate of the battery is not ragulated by the psu but by the phones internal regulating circuit a "bigger" psu doesn't have to result in faster charging time for all phones. How ever modern phones more or less all allow more than a standard USB power delivery on the PC for example (USB 2.0 it's 0,5A, USB 3.0 0,9A). USB for charging is rated at 1A/1,5A/2,0A/2,4A/3A most of the time ... sometimes (depending on charging technique) even 1A-4,8A but these are device specific techniques which likly only work on specific devici with thier original or special charger.

Back to: "It doesn't have to charge at 2,4A if the PSU say so, since the phones circuit regulate it."

But after a bit research I found that the P8 lite is capable to charge at a higher amparage than 1A so the 2,4A PSU you have will charge it way faster than the original one.

And to answer your questions, batteries are consume items they degrade over time and kinda wear out while there are in use. So even if you use your original 1A charger you wear out your battery.

Charging batteries faster results in a bigger wear out than a slow charge, a charging rate as a rule of thumb for batteries is to charge a battery at <1C (C=overall capacity of the battery, for the P8 lite a total capacity of 8,4Wh) for a long life time and decent charging speed, however smartphones get replaced by most people maybe all 2-3 years (OK, OK every year ... or for some dump people even every quarter) which is the reason why smartphone chargeing most of the time is rated faster than that (results in a shorter life time of the batterie, sometimes also the charging circuit and a hot(er) phone while charging > but faster charge, yay)

... so charging the P8 lite at 2,4A*5V (=12Wh =>1,43C>1C) will work and that way faster than with the normal one, but it may be not ideal.

Make sure to keep -more or less- an eye on the phone while you fast charge it and if it gets really hot (it will get hoter than normal) you should consider to get maybe a 1,5A Charger instead.(you know of "exploding" or "bending" phones while charging?)

It will wear the battery faster out and if you want to use this smartphone >5 years you will most likly have to replace the build in battery of this phone in that time (which is not a big deal if you're into DIY stuff, repairing your own stuff like I do, a new P8 lite battery is maybe 10$)

Aniallation · January 3, 2017

The phone will only draw as much as it can and/or needs to. If it's capable of drawing 2.4A it will. I believe it should at least be capable of charging at 1.5A to 2.0A, so you'll be getting faster charging out of the new brick than the old one, even if you're not using it to it's full potential.

You should not notice any major damage to the battery for the usable life of the phone by doing 2A charging, but it will still degrade quicker. If you only charge your phone overnight, I'd still stick with a 1A charger, it'll be full by the time you wake up anyways.

Quick Charge and stuff like that I'm still wary about. Even though my phone (Axon 7) comes with a Quick Charge 3.0 charger, I still charge it with a 5V/2A Samsung charger when I charge every night overnight. I only use the quick charger when I need to top-up mid day after doing something intensive. Heat kills batteries, and the difference between how hot the phone gets from just charging is HUGE between the two. Hence why I'm still not comfortable with using a quick charger daily.