Smartphone charging

Guys, I wanted to sort somethign out:

Does the amount of time your phone has power depend on how slow/fast you charge it?

I have 2 charging devices:
- one is very fast Anker Quick Charge 3.0
- the other one is stock (came with samsung S7 endge) but much slower

So the question is, if I use very fast charger, does the phone battery drains faster too? And alternatively, if I use a slow charger, will the phone keep charge better? (battery life).

Or it makes no difference?

It shouldn't matter in the short term, a full battery is a full battery. In the long term it might shorten the battery life but that still doesn't seem too much data on it.

Your S7 Edge came with a Quick Charge 2.0 charger, which is the exact version of QC that your S7E supports, not QC 3.0. So that Anker QC 3.0 charger doesn't (or shouldn't unless your OEM charger is defective somehow) charge your phone any faster than the stock one since your phone only supports 2.0.

But no, your phone won't discharge any faster just because you charged it faster, as that would pretty much defeat the purpose of using any sort of quick charging to begin with as opposed to charging it normally/slowly.

What has been debated though is that using these quick chargers may degrade your overall battery capacity faster, or at least faster than normal, as any battery will lose overall capacity over time. But fast charging does produce more heat inside the battery and that's the number 1 enemy of Li-ion batteries. I haven't seen any long-term stats though to show if the difference in battery wear is significantly different over slower charging though, so most of these claims are really just speculation. Personally, I don't think it makes too much of a difference over the course of a typical 1.5-2 year (at least with most tech enthusiasts here) ownership. So unless you plan on keeping your phone for 2-3+ years, I wouldn't worry about it much. Even then, it's not too hard to replace a battery in most phones with sealed batteries. I replaced the battery in my previous One M8, which iFixit made it sound near-impossible, in about 20 mins with no issues for about $12.

Something I just remembered, the usb cable Samsung provides is absolute trash. It had issues quick charging my S6 Edge when I had it, and it actually could have started a fire. The top part, close to the actual micro usb connector, turned brown and smelled really bad. I used another random micro usb cable I had and it never got hot and always quick charged.

I noticed that when I charge my smartphone with my computer the charge lasts less and it's slower to get full battery. However when I charge it with the plug on the wall, the battery charges much faster and lasts longer.

Dodogif said:

I noticed that when I charge my smartphone with my computer the charge lasts less and it's slower to get full battery. However when I charge it with the plug on the wall, the battery charges much faster and lasts longer.

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that is psychological.
the discharge rate doesn't change with how the device is charged unless the battery gets really hot during a fast charge. A hot battery will discharge faster than a cool battery.

Dodogif said:

I noticed that when I charge my smartphone with my computer the charge lasts less and it's slower to get full battery. However when I charge it with the plug on the wall, the battery charges much faster and lasts longer.

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It charges slower on your computer because the phone uses USB 2.0 and is restricted to ~500mA output, whereas most wall chargers now do at least 2-2.4A or use Qualcomm's Quick Charge tech and charge at higher voltages (with less Amps) as well to get a much faster initial charge on the phone.

As Zepher noted though; your false sense of discharging faster after charging on your computer is psychological unless your battery is defective/wore out or is not calibrated properly and reporting the wrong charge percentage.

T4rd said:

Your S7 Edge came with a Quick Charge 2.0 charger, which is the exact version of QC that your S7E supports, not QC 3.0. So that Anker QC 3.0 charger doesn't (or shouldn't unless your OEM charger is defective somehow) charge your phone any faster than the stock one since your phone only supports 2.0.
.

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I donno man, the difference between stock charger and 3.0 Anker is night and day.

Anker charges it to full within 10-20 mins tops. It's mad fast.

StormClaw said:

I donno man, the difference between stock charger and 3.0 Anker is night and day.

Anker charges it to full within 10-20 mins tops. It's mad fast.

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One issue could be the cable: if you're using the stock cable that came with the stock charger, try that with the Anker charger sometime (not using the Anker-provided cable which they should have included, of course this is an assumption on my part so if it's incorrect well, there you go) and see if there's a drop in the charging speed which I'm somewhat confident you'll probably note - use Ampere (mentioned later in this post) to see what's really going on if you don't already.

Good chargers are pretty easy to come by nowadays and with QC 2.0 and 3.0 what I've learned myself is the actual USB cable matters rather significantly in the charging equation in roundabout terms. I recently bought a bunch of those totally awesome Monoprice 3ft USB 2.0 A Male to Micro 5pin Male 28/24AWG Cable w/ Ferrite Core (Gold Plated) cables and they do indeed make a rather huge difference in device charging regardless of what device it is. For the price - like $1.23 each at the time of this post - you'd be hard pressed to find anything better out there, and the 6 ft version is just 6 measly pennies more if you happen to need longer ones.

In my own testing the stock USB cables from most all smartphone makers these days are rather lame, especially on devices with QC 2.0 or even 3.0 support. The only companies that I've noted produce really fantastic USB charging/data cables are BlackBerry and for a period of time Motorola - BlackBerry cables are top notch, every time in my experience, and Motorola ones from just a few years ago are pretty solid but lately they've been skimping and using thinner gauge wire to my disappointment.

But it's most definitely the cables that will have the greatest effect on charging performance as long as you've got a charger that can actually push what it claims per spec.

If it's an Android device you can use an app on the Google Play Market called Ampere to get an idea of what kind of charging rate is being implemented on your given device pretty easily - if it's in use of course there's going to be some drain by the hardware itself during the process. On my LG G Flex 2 which is using a custom ROM and kernel which allows me to adjust the charging rate to the max of 2.0A) with the stock LG charger (1.8A) and stock USB cable it'll show a typical charging rate of about 550-650 mAh which had me wondering what was going on - when I attached one of those Monoprice cables it jumped to 1.7A which is what I should be seeing. If I attach an Apple 12W 2.4A USB charger (thrift store special brand new in the box for $2.99!) it jumps right to a solid 2000 mAh so I get the actual 2.0A limit the modded kernel supports even with the phone on (screen at about 30% brightness, IPS LCD panel).

Having great chargers is awesome but make sure you've got actual good quality charging cables as well, preferably the 28/24 gauge mix if at all possible.

T4rd said:

It charges slower on your computer because the phone uses USB 2.0 and is restricted to ~500mA output, whereas most wall chargers now do at least 2-2.4A or use Qualcomm's Quick Charge tech and charge at higher voltages (with less Amps) as well to get a much faster initial charge on the phone.

As Zepher noted though; your false sense of discharging faster after charging on your computer is psychological unless your battery is defective/wore out or is not calibrated properly and reporting the wrong charge percentage.

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You may be right about the psychological aspect but still it seems that way. Another thing is, when I unplug the phone the percentage changes usually it indicates more than it had while charging. So I guess there is problem with the battery actually

Some batteries will only charge to about 75% when they are fast charged. This is a built in safety device due to the heat that is generated while fast charging.
I dont know if this applies to your phone or not but it could explain your scenario