According to experts, fast charging can be a nice-to-have feature, but it can also ultimately lead to shorter battery life, depending on the battery design.
Is fast charging REALLY bad for your battery?
While battery life has remained around the same level for the past few years, new features that speed up your phone’s charging time have become a regular feature in new devices. Fast charging, also known as rapid charging, often promises to juice up a phone’s battery to 50% in a matter of minutes. Now, however, Xiaomi has revealed that it can fully charge a phone in eight minutes. That might seem like a good thing, but experts say shorter charging times could come at a price.
“To support fast charging, cell developers have typically redesigned the cell with thinner electrodes, thicker current collectors, and electrolyte optimized for high speed,” Harrold Rust, the CEO of lithium-ion battery developer Enovix, told Lifewire in an email.
"However, these redesigns can result in a loss of energy density. The alternative, higher charging rates without these changes, typically results in a reduction in cycle life. The same changes to cell design can reduce or eliminate this reduced cycle life, but again at the expense of energy density."
