The ability to charge your phone faster probably is one of the bigger breakthroughs of the past couple years, at least as far as mobile tech is concerned. And as such manufacturers have been tripping over themselves to claim the title of "fastest-charging phone." And Samsung has increased the battery capacity in the Galaxy S7 to 3,000 mAh for the prime model, and a whopping 3,600 mAh in the curved-screen edge model. That's a lot to charge. But Samsung has included something interesting with this year's models.
You'll now have the option to turn fast charging off in the settings. Let's take a quick look.
Tucked into the battery settings you'll find a couple settings. The first is for "Fast cable charging." Here's how it's described:
Charge your battery more quickly. Your device may become hot while using Fast cable charging. If Fast cable charging is turned off, standard charging will be used instead.
Why would you ever want to turn this off? If you're really worried about the heat, and long-term battery life, we suppose. We went into battery tech in detail in our Futurology series. And heat remains the enemy. So if you're really concerned about your phone while it's charging via the microUSB cable, you can turn it off here. Qualcomm is open about the fact that their Quick Charge tech (which is similar to what Samsung has here) will decrease the overall lifespan of a battery, but says that most users will have upgraded to a new phone long before any deleterious effects are felt.
There's also a setting for Fast wireless charging. It reads thusly:
Charge your battery faster. You may hear a fan noise while using Fast charging. If Fast charing is off, standard wireless charing will be used instead.
So that's the same sort of thing. But the bigger difference is that Samsung's wireless charger has an active fan inside to help keep things cool. And we could imagine someone having this next to their bed, but not wanting the fan kicking on at night. So, there's another option here.
Or you don't have to use them at all and can keep on charging just as fast as you possibly can. Your call.
