How Fast Is Too Fast?

     I did a lot of personal research this week about something that absolutely blew my mind. There was a smartphone that released earlier this year that had all of the standard specs that someone could ask for in a phone; 5000mAh battery, HDR10+, 108MP main camera, and a Snapdragon 888 processor. All of this sounds amazing in a phone, but the thing that blew me away is the fact that the company that created that phone, Xiaomi, somehow figured out a way to safely incorporate fast charging of up to 120W.

    Just to put that into perspective, an article by AppleInsider did multiple tests to see how fast Apple's iPhone 13 Pro Max charged with their 30W charger. According to their tests, Apple's phone charged from 0 to full in about 86 minutes with their charger maintaining about 27W for about 30 minutes and then caps off at 22W for the rest. For comparison, both phones use a Lithium-ion battery and both phones are roughly the same size with the iPhone having a 6.3" screen while the Xiaomi has a 6.67" screen.

    So with the two phones being roughly the same size, how does Xiaomi manage to safely increase their charging speeds by 4 times what the iPhone's speed is? According to an article by Manthiram, lithium batteries have two sides, a positive and a negative, and the ions within the batteries with travel through a liquid electrolyte solution from the negative to the positive and that is what creates the energy. Whenever you go to recharge your phone, the reaction is reversed and the ions will travel from positive to negative. Due to this process, it does create excess heat and which is why the common thought of fast charging is that it is too dangerous especially at 120W. 


    The difference between an iPhone and the Xiaomi 11, is that the iPhone only has one battery cell. Xiaomi actually uses something called Parallel charging with two battery cells instead of one. Their phone still has the total 5000mAh battery but it is separated into two cells so 2500mAh each. This allows each cell to be charged at up to 60W instead of 120W for one total cell which decreases the amount of heat released, resulting in a more controlled charging environment that is less dangerous for the consumer. Although the fast charging does sound great, it does also have a con. Due to the phone needing to have room for 2 battery cells, it greatly cuts into the available space in the phone. This could cause hardware compatibility issues if they wanted to include different parts into their phones. It also means that the overall battery size of the phone is going to be small. It's still amazing that Xiaomi was able to include a 5000 mAh battery especially when the iPhone 13 Max only hoist a 4352 mAh battery.

    All in all, seeing the technology grow from when charging your phone would take all night to now being able to charge your phone from what Xiaomi claim "0 to 100% in 17 minutes" is absolutely incredible. I really hope to see other phone companies take note of what Xiaomi is doing because not only are they pushing the capabilities of their devices, they are also keeping them consumer friendly. 


References

120W Xiaomi Hypercharge for xiaomi 11T Pro - Xiaomi Global Official. for Xiaomi 11T Pro - Xiaomi Global Official. (n.d.). Retrieved April 1, 2022, from https://www.mi.com/global/product/xiaomi-11t-pro-120w-xiaomi-hypercharge/

Manthiram, A., Author InformationARTICLE SECTIONSJump ToCorresponding AuthorArumugam Manthiram - Materials Science and EngineeringProgram & Texas Materials Institute, Author, C., Arumugam Manthiram - Materials Science and EngineeringProgram & Texas Materials Institute, r[email protected], E., Notes, & The author declares no competing financial interest. (n.d.). An outlook on lithium ion battery technology. ACS Publications. Retrieved April 1, 2022, from https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acscentsci.7b00288

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Java Refresher

 This week I decided to give myself a refresher on Java since I haven't studied it heavily in a few months. I'm currently going through Java 11 For Complete Beginners by John Purcell on Udemy. So far in his lesson plan, he has talked about how Java compiles the code so that it can be used from computer to computer with no real issue. John has also ran through the very basics of how to print out different things.     System.out.println("Hello world!");  That's the famous first line of code that every beginner to coding learns. Although it may be slightly different depending on language, the concept is the same. The course is also teaching the fundamentals of code like creating integers and variables to be used throughout the code. They can incorporated into different kinds of arithmetic depending on my needs.      int cats = 7;     int dogs = 5;     int total = cats + dogs;     System.out.println(total);  This small bl...
Read more

Rising of OLED

Image
      Unfortunately, I have been stumped on the direction I want to take my application after seeing similar ones fail, but I've been on a huge technology kick just researching a lot about new products that are coming out and how they are changing the future of how we experience things. The most recent thing I've been researching is OLED screens. Nowadays, OLED has become a staple in almost every single field that involves a screen of some sort. Nintendo just recently released their OLED Nintendo Switch. Samsung's latest phones have all included an OLED screen to complete with Apple's Liquid Retina Pro Displays. Even TVs are adopting OLED and evolving it from OLED to QD OLED.            According to an article by Hong Jae Shin and co., OLED stands for organic light-emitting diodes. This means that each diode or pixel on a screen emits its own light. This differs from regular LED or even mini LED because they require backlight to showcase...
Read more

Random Class in Java

Image
    This week I wanted to keep improving my Java skills. I continued my Udemy course by John Purcell and watched his lecture on utilizing random class on Java. In his lesson, he utilized the the random class by creating Hangman in Eclipse but I wanted to try and use the random class with my own code from scratch. I figured the best way to learn the random class and to keep it simple would be to create a dice via Java.      It is a fairly simple project but it let me try something new and let me experiment with the random class and importing different items in Java. I had to begin the code by telling Java that I want the object DiceRoll to be Random after that I needed to initialize x, which could be labeled anything, and to have it be within the range of 1 to 6. If I were to change the line int x = DiceRoll.nextInt(6) + 1; <-- to int x = DiceRoll.nextInt(10) + 5 It would make the dice roll start at 5 instead of 1 and make the dice roll any number from 5 to 15...
Read more