I understand that an electric supply can be a higher voltage (120v, or 240v, etc.) and within those voltages be a different Amperage (15A, 20A, 50A, etc.).
But none of this is “smart” or doing anything special besides supplying an amount of power or amperage that is available by the connection.
I also understand that a battery needs line voltage (AC current) to be changed to DC to work. So I get that there is a converter (rectifier?) to do this.
So where/what is the “smart” part?
Can a charger really make my phone or car charge faster than the available electrical supply?
Can a charger really make my phone or car charge faster than a different charger in the same electrical supply?
In: 7
A fast charger simply is capable of outputting a higher voltage and current to your device (as long as device supports it). Remeber the phone charger is basically a power supply that converts the AC to DC and not all chargers can convert to the higher voltage/wattage DC. The smart part means that the charger and phone fan negotiate the current and voltage instead of the charger outputting a fixed voltage and current all the time.
For cars, AC current is converted to DC by the car, the charging plug and permanently installed charging equipment just provides access to high voltage/current AC.
For phones, there’s some communication between the host and device to communicate what charging profiles are supported.
Modern portable device (laptop, phone, pad) chargers have a chip running code on them that lets the charger and device/phone talk to each other. When you connect the charger to the device, the device notices someone at the door and requests its capabilities, say:
– i can accept 30 Watts by way of 20 V @ 1.5 A
– or I can accept 10 Watts by way of 10 V @ 1 A
– or I can accept the standard “slow” charge rate of 2.5 W by way of 5 V @ 0.5 A
Then the charger says one of the following:
– cool I can give you 30 W at your requested voltage. you’re “fast charging”
– sucks, I can give 30 W but at a different voltage, so here is 2.5 W. you’re slow charging.
– cool I can only give 10 W at your requested voltage and you’re “medium” charging
– sucks, I can’t do any of that…here’s 2.5 W
I’m simplifying of course and I may have the sequence incorrectly
>Can a charger really make my phone or car charge faster than the available electrical supply?
No, it can’t create more power than what is being supplied. So if the charger has a supply that is 12v at 1.1 amps (13.2W) it can’t somehow supply 12v at 2 amps (24W). At least not constantly, it can supply the 12v @ 2 amps in short bursts, but its output over time will still be 13.2W or less.
The key thing about electronic devices is that the actual charger is in the phone or the laptop, or whatever.
The thing you plug into the wall doesn’t actually do the charging, it just converts the voltage from wall voltage (which is usually too high for electronics) to a lower voltage which is more suitable.
The charger in your phone contains a small computer which knows how fast the charger can charge and how much power it needs. When you plug the phone into the wall adaptor, the phone checks the capability of the wall adaptor and makes sure that it is powerful enough and whether it can supply the correct voltage. If it is, then the phone will ask the adaptor for a specific voltage, and it will then charge at the best possible speed.
The big problem is that different phones and adaptors speak different languages when they try and agree on the best voltage and charging speed to use. This is why some phones won’t fast charge with some “chargers”, but will with others.
In cars, a fast charger has a massive power input like a water heater, stove or clothes dryer. It’s sort of like a reverse freeway that says “I can get you to 65mph for an hour straight” whereas a simple wall unit is like “let’s stop at Wendy’s and I need to pick up milk on the way home”.
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