125W charging is coming — what do you think about that?

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Samsung 45w Fast Charger
Samsung 45w Fast Charger (Image credit: Ara Wagoner / Android Central)

Charging a phone takes less time in 2020 than it ever has before. Samsung offers 25W charging out-of-the-box with an optional way to get 45W speeds, OnePlus's 30W wired and wireless charging is excellent, and so on.

On July 12, the Oppo account on Twitter announced that it's going to unveil its 125W charging solution on July 15. Yep, you read that correctly — 125W charging. It's insane.

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This got a lot of our AC forum members to talking, with some of them saying the following:

Not sure how people need that much fast charging. Even 25w will be more than enough for most people. I mean battery life should last all day anyway so is it really needed?

thegame161

Probably not really *needed* but boy will it be dead handy, the 10 minutes charging is from 0-100% which most people hardly ever do anyway, it will probably mean that most people will be able to charge once or twice a day for a few minutes, no overnight charging needed, it will probably make wireless charging a little redundant too, makes it convenient for the people who swear by keeping their...

j_hansen

It won't be any of the current Li-ion (mainly cobalt for phone/laptop batteries and magnesium for the high drain ones for vaping). There is research on a solid elecrolite and using sodium instead of lithium. With the electrolite being solid then you don't get dendrite growth so can be charged much more rapidly. They are still in the lab though and years away from to-scale testing.

Bodestone

What say you? What do you think about 125W charging?

Join the conversation in the forums!

Joe Maring
Joe Maring

Joe Maring was a Senior Editor for Android Central between 2017 and 2021. You can reach him on Twitter at @JoeMaring1.
14 Comments
  • "Not needed"? Really?? This is great...if it really is that fast. I mean, imagine you just played your favorite mobile game and ran your battery down to 15% then your friend, unannounced, says he/she wants to go out all night. Well darn, you either have to be prepared for your phone to go dead in a little while, or wait an hour or whatever for your phone to charge. Not anymore...now you'll only have to wait as long as it takes to get out of your sweatpants and into a decent pair of pants. That's it. Done. Charged.
  • You only have to wait an hour if you own an iPhone ha ha.
  • And that's better than 10 minutes? I only have to wait an hour with my phone too...but anything less than that is better. I think I'm missing your point unfortunately
  • Dayum how long does it take you to put on pants?!
  • I wouldn't wait an hour to charge. I would immediately plug in my OnePlus with Dash charge while I take 10-15 minutes to change my clothes and get ready. That would get me to 30 Then I would charge it in the car with my in-car Dash charger while we drive 15 -20 minutes to wherever we're going. I would easily have 60 after all that. More than enough to finish off the night and get to noon the next day. No need for 100% charge.
  • I guess my point is, anything faster is more convenient. Sore, we can make sure with what we have, but why not have faster? Ask any EV car owner if they'd like faster charging. I'm guessing not one would say no. Why would I say "no thanks" to my phone charging faster??
  • Mo better, bring it on, hurry up i can't wait!
  • I don't have an opinion of it unless it means they are using the faster charging to justify using smaller batteries with the idea that when you charge it doesn't take long. Typically I charge my phone while I sleep so I don't really care if it takes up to 8 hours to fully charge. If the phone cannot get through the day then I don't want it regardless of how fast it can charge.
  • Another way to degrade your battery faster with 125W charging, Android is now getting ridiculous.
  • Wrong... Device Manufacturers are getting ridiculous. Don't lump Android, an OPERATING SYSTEM, in with hardware... ANDROID is not causing this, nor can it cause this. MANUFACTURERS are...
  • I'd say this is pretty cool. Like, VERY cool even. Phones is just the first step for this. If they can pack a 125W charging solution into that small of a wallwart, then imagine what this'll do for laptops and other mobile devices? Imagine the battery tech that would then get passed over to those devices as well! You'd have a laptop that could last maybe 1-3 hours, suddenly be perfectly capable of lasting you ALL DAY because you would only have to plug in for a handful of minutes to get yourself topped back up. Oh boy you're writing that super important blog post for a tech website, and you forgot to charge the laptop before you left the house! And you only have 5 minutes before your flight to WhoGivesACrap City is supposed to take off... whatever shall you do?! OH WAIT! I only need 2 minutes to get up to 50% charge! That'll last me a while as i do whatever other meaningless tasks there are to do! But as for phones. Yea, this seems odd... I'd rather have a way longer lasting battery, while maintaining the powerful computing power of a top-of-the-line phone... I don't want a smaller battery that lasts half as long because it can charge twice as fast... Thinking about it... makes me wonder if they're getting their 'timings' for the charging based on something like that exactly: Its a 1500mah battery being charged twice as quickly because it is half the capacity of the usual 3000mah batteries... cause ya know, of course it'll charge twice as fast, cause there's half as much capacity to fill...
  • Given that it looks possible chargers in the box will stop how much will they charge for the required charger though? This is just a spec chase. Faster processors, fast charging. All you're achieving is killing your battery sooner. Seems to be those 30-40w chargers are way fast enough already.
  • Curious what charging spec they will use for this. USB-C is maxed at 100W right now, 20v x 5A. 125W would need to up something. 25v x 5A? 21v x 6A? Don't really need it to be some Oppo proprietary thing with an odd ball connector. 125W Sounds like a nice thing for laptops, but shoving that many electrons, that fast, into a little cell phone battery seems ill advised. We aren't doing anything close to that now.
  • I guess the phone manufactures wants to sell phones more frequently. The faster you charge, the shorter the lifespan of your battery, the faster you'll have to upgrade.