does a fast charger hurt your phone battery?

In general do chargers with higher amps/watts and charge fast hurt phone batteries?

Thanks for the help.

Fast chargers are kind of a misnomer. The phone will only draw as much power as needed from a charger, regardless of how high the amperage rating is. Some people say a higher-than-stock rated charger had allowed for somewhat quicker charging, but I haven't done any tests between my normal and higher rated chargers, or seen any tests backing up or disproving those claims. My belief is that if it is any quicker, it's not enough to be noticeable to the average user.

I do like higher rated chargers, though, for other reasons. The biggest being that the charger doesn't have to work as hard to put out the same power as a weaker one. All other things being equal, this should allow the charger to last longer. It's also handy in case someone else wants to charge off it and you don't know their phone's power requirements.


In short, if you're using your phone to do the charging, the higher rated chargers make no difference and don't affect battery life. Now if you're talking about an external charger where you pull the battery from the phone and charge separately, I don't know. Then it is the charger regulating how much amperage is being fed into the battery and I do know older style batteries did benefit from a slow charge (think NiCad AA's). I would think current Li-Ion batteries handle fast charges better.

Some phones are capable of drawing more power than the stock charger is capable of supplying. Some phones will draw up to 1.5A when paired with a charger capable of supplying it. By design, the power management chip in your phone won't let the battery accept more current than it can handle.

So, no, your battery won't be "harmed."

-Charles
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