How does adaptive charging work and what is it actually useful for? Smartphones are an important part of our lives. We use them to stay connected with friends and family, get work done, and entertain ourselves. As we use our smartphones more and more, it is important that we protect them from damage and of course make the investment last as long as possible. One way to protect your smartphone is by using adaptive charging technology.
Adaptive charging, also called “Adaptive Fast Charging” by Samsung or “Optimized Battery Charging” by Apple, is a feature on some smartphones that helps to prolong the life of your device’s battery. When you plug your phone into a charger, this feature will automatically adjust the amount of power that is sent to your device based on how much power your device needs. This means that your phone will not overcharge, which can damage the battery. You might want to check these collections of Samsung phone manuals to see if your phone is capable of adaptive charging.
There are many benefits to using adaptive charging, including prolonging the life of your device’s battery. When you use this feature, you can be sure that your phone is getting the perfect amount of power, and you won’t have to worry about damaging your phone’s battery. In addition, it can help to improve the efficiency of your device’s charging, which means that you’ll be able to charge your phone faster, but only when you need it charged fast.
How adaptive charging works in real life
As an example use-case, I can share with you how I use adaptive charging on my smartphone. On my Google Pixel 6 Pro, the operating system is a stock Android software. Within you have digital wellbeing features that include useful settings around going to bed and setting an alarm up for the morning. Since the smartphone knows when it should be charged up to 100% it can adjust the wattage of how strongly the device’s battery is charged.
If I go to bed very early, it will charge significantly slower than if I binge-watch something or game until late into the night and then go to bed with fewer hours of sleep for myself and for my phone. If it’s the weekend and maybe I just discard my alarm clock without getting up, the charging would simply cease at 100% and only keep it at that level without overcharging. If you find that your phone is charging too slow and are not familiar with this function, this might be the reason and if you truly can’t live with it, you can also switch it off.
How to turn adaptive charging on/off on a Pixel phone
If you want to check on your device if the adaptive charging is currently switched on or not you can review the settings or make changes like this.
To turn on/off Adaptive charging:
- Open the “Settings” app.
- Tap on “Battery” and select “Adaptive preferences”.
- Turn “Adaptive charging” on or off.
Smartphones that currently support adaptive charging
What kind of phones currently support this kind of technology?
- Google: Pixel phones running Android 12 and later (Pixel 4, 5, and 6 devices)
- Samsung: Galaxy S20, S20+, S20 Ultra, Z Flip, Note10, Note10+, Fold, S10e, S10, S10+, Note9, S9, S9+, Note8, S8, S8+, S7, S7 edge, Note5, S6, S6+ and S6 edge
- Apple: iPhones running iOS 13 and later
Since Android is a very popular mobile OS with many versions that gets heavily modified, it’s also possible that non-Google and non-Samsung versions of adaptive charging are also available on other smartphones already or will be made available in the near future.
Closing
If you’re looking for a way to prolong the life of your smartphone’s battery, adaptive charging is a great option. This feature can help to keep your phone charged and ready to go, without damaging the battery. In addition, it can improve the efficiency of your device’s charging, so you can charge your phone faster when you need it. Of course, it would still be best if manufacturers would simply let us swap batteries at the end of their lifetime, but we have to make the best use of the tech that we can get.
YouTube: Rupesh Sinha about adaptive charging on Google Pixel smartphones
Photo credit: The photos (1, 2) in this article are symbolic and have been done by Vera Petrunina.
