{Disarmed} The value of time: how we have gone from "leaving it charging overnight" to having the mobile ready in 10 minutes
A tangled cable on the bedside table, a "good night" and hey, to plug in the mobile until the next morning. The blinking pilot light until the first rays of sunlight filter through the blinds and a new day begins.
This was a routine practice in thousands of homes. We Spaniards have had to unlearn what it is to charge the mobile in a shorter time estimate. And in this long-distance race to achieve the fastest fast charge of all Xiaomi has several podiums in a row.
From 2 hours to 8 minutes
We have already talked on other occasions about what Xiaomi's hypercharge is and how it performs. A technological formula that has turned our conception of waiting time upside down.
Those 80-minute uploads were enough to watch one of those short movies or long episodes. And it was also a bit annoying to have to wait, at least, for that coveted 30% to answer calls or update the operating system. And it is that, if the two, three and even four charges of some mobiles were enough to cook a small banquet of dishes, the last fast charges are, hopefully, enough to heat up a quick coffee in the microwave.
If you don't need to leave your phone on stand-by for hours, why even put the charger in your bag? Times have changed and, with it, our charging habits, our concern about finding a USB port at the right station , airport or train dock. You just need to take a look at this comparative table on values offered by Xiaomi itself in different terminals:
16W | 27w | 33W | 55W | 67W | 100W | 120W | 150W | 200W | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
STANDBY TIME FROM 0 TO 100% for a 4500mAh battery | 120 minutes | 73 minutes | 61 minutes | 53 minutes | 36 minutes | 25 minutes | 17 minutes | 12 minutes | 8 minutes |
Five years of constant evolution
Let's look back slightly, just five years, until 2018. Xiaomi Mi 8 , with its 3,400mAh, bet on Quick Charge 4.0 charging. 18 W, although the charger in its box was compatible with QuickCharge 3.0. This fast charge promised that in half an hour, under optimal conditions, it would charge up to 30%. The reality was that 100% was not reached until 115 minutes of waiting. The same as lasts ' Uncharted '-the movie, not the game.
The generation of the Xiaomi Mi 9 (and a whole string of models such as the Redmi K20, K20 Pro or Mi 9T) brought with it another fast charge, that of 27W, which meant charging the Xiaomi Mi 9 in just over an hour or having in 30 minutes 58% of full charge.
The Xiaomi 10 featured 30W charging with support for Power Delivery 3.0 and Quick Charge 4+. In summary, in 64 minutes I managed to charge the device to 100% and in 25 minutes to 50%.
Other alternatives followed. A whole family of models, from the Redmi Note 10S through the POCO X3 Pro to more recent ones such as the POCO M4 Pro 5G or Xiaomi 11 Lite 5G NE , bet on a 33 W charge. Depending on the capacities of their batteries, they achieve full charges in no more than 70 minutes.
With the Xiaomi Mi 11 came the fast charge of 55 W. According to our analysts , the result was not as impressive as promised, taking 75 minutes to achieve a full charge, despite the 45-minute wait promised by the brand. Shortly after Qualcomm presented its Quick Charge 5.0, compatible with up to 100W, a voltage that multiplies by 10 that rule that considers everything that exceeds 10 watts to be "fast charging".
Figures, in any case, that were reached and exceeded in just a few months. Xiaomi stepped on the accelerator and the new Xiaomi 11T 5G presented an official 67W fast charging system: 100% in 36 minutes . In practice you rarely had to wait more than 40 minutes. The new Xiaomi 12 is ready in just 39 minutes, according to Xiaomi.
And more ambitious was the proposal of the Xiaomi 11T Pro : 120W fast charge that translated into 17 minutes to have the terminal at 100%. Even less: 4,000 mAh are charged in 10 minutes, thus setting a historical record.
And a look into the future: do we really save?
There is still more: the new Xiaomi MIX 5 bets on the 150W hypercharge , which guarantees a charge from 0 to 100% in about 12-15 minutes, depending on the milliamps of storage. The Xiaomi 12 Ultra, perhaps, would be the first to use that 200W ultra-fast charge that, in just 8 minutes, would have the terminal 100% full.
While fast charging doesn't degrade batteries as much as originally thought, thanks to learning algorithms, dynamic voltage to keep GaN chargers in check, and construction optimizations that allow less degradation on materials, fast charging continues to present gaps and unknowns about the health and life of our mobiles.
The big unknown of this extra voltage, this extra power consumption is, does it lead us to consume more electricity? A study by the National Institute of Statistics said that charging our mobile costs approximately 1.5 euros a year, 2 euros if we leave the charger in "pocket" mode without unplugging it.
On the other hand, fast charging invites us to turn up the brightness and not worry , to exploit the facet of having more in less time and not being so economical, generating a larger carbon footprint, a much more invasive ecological impact. Shouldn't a contrary goal be pursued, a self-awareness for the sake of being somewhat less wasteful?
A voltage of 200W presents a scenario 20 times more demanding. Save time at the expense of investing in costs? Freedom not to think about charging your mobile, but a little afraid of that increasingly high electricity bill. Until we have a firm answer, we are more of optimizing , saving and pulling some tricks to consume less energy, really.
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The news The value of time: how we have gone from "leaving it charging all night" to having the mobile ready in 10 minutes was originally published in xiaomist by Isra Fdez .
My Xiaomi 11t Pro 5G used to charge at full capacity but after a few days of having to charge it with an off-brand adapter it never reached full charging-capacity again, even with the original 120W adapter. How do I fix this?
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