Our lives demand extensive use of smartphones. It’s safe to say that daily tasks and most of our communication depend on it. With this comes the need for quick charging or as commonly known, Fast Charging.

Making its appearance in Qualcomm chargers about three years ago, the standards for Fast Charging have been subject to several evolutions and innovations. Up until recently, OnePlus’ Dash Charger were considered as the world’s fastest chargers.

When we did our own research, we found some surprising results. Turns out there is a better and faster charger out there. Have a look at our infographic, to know which charger is better than OnePlus’ Dash Charger.

Fast-Charging-standards

 

Our smartphones have become an integral part of our lives, even a day without your phone could lead you into trouble. From following technology news to finding directions to the closest restaurant, we rely on our smartphones to connect us. Studies show people claimed that losing their smartphone stressed them as much as the fear of a terrorist attack. This truly (and rather worryingly) shows how important smartphones are to our lives.

Whether you are a fitness freak or a person who depends on your phone to schedule your day, your phone’s battery is a matter of discussion. Flagship phones are everywhere, and without a doubt, these flagships offer you many features that aid your daily life. However, the battery backup of our smartphone is what concerns us the most.

Our lives are so hectic that we not only need our phones to last all day but also charge in a jiffy. While there are hundreds of benchmarks that compare smartphone performance, graphics and battery life, there isn’t one that tells you which is the fastest charging phone out there. With the OnePlus 6 and the Honor 10 in the market, we felt this was the right time to see which is the fastest charging standard in the market.

While charging your phone with a friend’s charger, you must have found that some chargers slow down the battery recharge process. Why does that happen? Well, that is because every company has its own standards for charging their smartphones and they work well only when you feed it with a charger that supports that standard.

Fast charging and the standards for fast charging have changed a lot ever since Qualcomm introduced their widely used “Quick Charge 1.0” standard way back in 2013. Since then Qualcomm has made many improvements to the standard. Phone manufacturers further create versions of their own based on the QC standard. Most popular being Motorola’s Turbo Charge which is found in every single one of their phones and Samsung’s Adaptive Fast Charge found on their flagships.

These are not the only three standards in the market which is dominated by various fast charging options. OnePlus has its Dash Charging, Huawei has Supercharging and MediaTek has its Pump Express. But the case here is, should these companies invest in their proprietary chargers and charging options? Especially when we are trying to get rid of the mess caused by proprietary standards?

Cleaning up this mess is exactly what USB Power Delivery hopes to achieve. USB Power Delivery hopes to be the standard for fast charging for any device that uses the USB standard for charging (USB-c). What’s really good about it is, it is not limited to smartphones but designed to work with a range of devices like hard drives, printers, and even laptops. The latest version of USB PD 3.0 can deliver up to 100 Watts of power (20 V at 5A) which makes it great for most laptops. Apple Fast Charge is also a fast-charging standard that is based on USB-PD. Apart from standardization, the biggest benefit of USB-PD is it has the potential to decrease the electronic waste worldwide. With uniform standards and every company incorporating the same standards into their products would mean that you will not have to change your charger every time you purchase a new smartphone. This is a reason why even the latest Qualcomm Quick Charge 4.0/4.0+ is compatible with USB-PD and it won’t be long before we see other makers following suit.

While uniform standards may be a distant dream, what people really care about is the fastest and if the numbers are to be believed the answer is a little shocking. Huawei’s Super Charge beats OnePlus’ Dash Charge by managing a charge rate of 46.57 mAh/ minute compared to 41.25 mAh/ minute of the Dash Charge. So let us see what gives these two standards a sizable lead over the others.

OnePlus’ Dash Charging has universally been known as one of the fastest charging standards because of the many innovative improvements and changes by the company. They moved the whole charging mechanism to the charger from the phone to help reduce heating, then they stuck to low voltage-high amperage charging (5V at 4A) to juice up the phones quickly without causing them to heat up. A similar approach is followed by Huawei where their charger too includes all the charging circuit and can charge at 22.5 Watts (5V at 4.5A). This gives them a slight lead over OnePlus. But an ace up Huawei’s sleeve is that their Supercharge standard is compatible with USB-PD and Qualcomm Quick Charge also, while OnePlus’ Dash Charging is known to be extremely proprietary. In fact, OnePlus phones simply refuse to fast charge with any charger/ power bank that isn’t Dash Charge compatible. That’s not it, A Google engineer even found out that the OnePlus USB cables could potentially damage any Non-OnePlus phones.

When you look at the graph in the context of Apple you can see some shocking results. Apple doesn’t provide a fast charger in the box, but even when using an iPad charger to charge it up, the iPhone X is slow as a snail in charging rate. It’s actually charges at half the pace as the fastest ones in the test. This is quite shocking as even a Moto E (one fo the most affordable phone from Motorola) comes with a fast charger in the box and can charge reasonably fast. We really wish Apple stopped calling it Fast charging.

But on the other hand what’s wrong with Google and USB PD? It’s somewhere at the bottom when it comes to changing speeds. Some of our eagle-eyed readers might have seen that we haven’t shown the Pixel 2 XL to have an 18W charger but a 10W charger. This is because Pixel 2 XL actually charges at around 10 Watts and not 18 Watts and this slows down their charging speed tremendously.

If you are in the market for a phone and want one that has the fastest charging standard than look no further than the fastest in today’s time, Huawei’s Supercharge.

Updates:

Do note that while Huawei Supercharge is the fastest, the Honor 10, Honor View 10 and Huawei P20 Pro sold in India do not come with the Super Charge compatible charger and make do with an 18W Quick Charger. This takes them around 2-3 hours to charge and Huawei/ Honor recommends against using third party options available online. Because of this, the result for India changes with OnePlus’ Dash Charge being the fastest charging standard in India.

Huawei has promised to launch the Supercharger technology in India soon and will also provide the same in the box.

A month after the release of this infographic, news came about the imminent launch of the Lamborghini Oppo Find X which comes with a 50W Super VOOC charger and a 3400mAh battery. Super VOOC is claimed to juice up the battery in 35 minutes which gives it a charging rate of 97.14mAh/ minute which is more than double that of the Super Charge (46.57 mAh/min). But the phone has not yet launched and is a special edition that costs around $2000 or Rs.1.37 lakh. This put it in the niche category and we can revise our ranking once the technology appears on more common smartphones.

The Oppo R17 Pro has launched with the Super VOOC technology at CNY 4,299, once detailed reviews appear we will accordingly update our results.