New tech comes out every year with the latest processors that provide the fastest performance, smartphones use better cameras that take photos that are closer to the likes of Nikon and Canon. The displays on our portable devices are also getting better with higher resolution screens and most displays are now using OLED rather than LCD panels, and this is most common with smartphones now.
More Power calls for Larger Batteries
One thing that has changed slightly over the years and is becoming quite a drastic change is the way that we charge our devices. Charging isn’t complicated, you connect a charger to your device and forget it. However, the importance of being able to charge your device faster is a more important factor than it has ever been and this is due to phones using higher capacity batteries.
The usage of large batteries is because phones and other devices like tablets and laptops are becoming more powerful, and therefore they burn faster into battery power. Phones can last longer but if you’re heavily using your smartphone throughout the day then you’re going to notice that your battery is depleting fast. Then to get that battery back to 100%, regular charging is not going to cut it and that is why fast charging is available for nearly all smartphones that have come out in the past three years.
Different Fast Charging Technologies
Most might think that are wireless charging or rather, “fast wireless charging” is the answer to the higher power consumption of phones, but wired charging is still a lot faster than wireless charging. The most common fast charging that is used among Android smartphones is Quick Charge from Qualcomm. As useful as QC is, it’s not a universal fast charging method that you can use to charge other Non-compatible smartphones like the iPhone or the things like laptops or tablets. There is also Dash Charge that is used by OnePlus smartphones and that is some very fast charging that has a 5 Amp charging speed. Once again, though, Dash Charge is only compatible with OnePlus phones and you even have to use a specific charging cable to make use of it.
The Universal One
There is one solution to getting universal charging that is also very powerful and it is known as Power Delivery. Power Delivery has become a lot more commonly used among portable devices, with many phones using the charging tech, and that are now plenty of laptops and tablets that use it, too. So what about Power Delivery makes it more useful than any other special charging? Well, it uses the Type-C standard port, and it’s able to deliver tons of power.
For fast charging smartphones using Power Delivery, you would need an 18W PD charger. Another big highlight of Power Delivery charging is that it can be used with the iPhone now. The iPhone has been PD compatible since the iPhone X and the iPhone 8 was released. The Apple phone does still use the proprietary Lightning port, but you can still charge from a USB-C port when you use a Lightning to USB-C cable.
PD can also be used to fast charge most Android smartphones, it especially Samsung phones. The Samsung Galaxy S8 is when Samsung phones became PD enabled, from then on users are now able to fast charge their Galaxy Note 9, 10 and S10 phones.
When it comes to charging PD laptops, most of them are going to require that you use a 30W PD charger or higher because they’re larger and more powerful devices. Some may even require that you use a 60W PD charger. However, even if you have a 60W PD charger for your laptop, the best part is that you can still use that insanely powerful charger to charge your smartphone.
Power Delivery Upgrades
Also, there are two main improvements that Power Delivery has undergone. The first one is that Power Delivery chargers can be very small and still output lots of power. This is possible when a PD charger makes use of a Gallium Nitride chip. The chip can replace many parts within a charger while still being able to output lots of power. What you end up with is a 30W PD charger that can have 1-inch dimensions like Anker’s PowerPort PD 1 that we have shown above.
One other improvement is that PD charging is now using Dynamic charging. A few years ago, most PD chargers would just use a single USB-C PD port, but many PD wall chargers now use two. Not only are you able to use double the Power Delivery charging at the same time, but you can use more or less power depending on how many devices you’re charging. These Dynamic changes can have two USB-C PD ports, with each port outputting 30W when charging two devices, but if just a single device is charging, the port will output 60W. That’s double the amount of power, and this can be useful if you want to charge your laptop faster.