Pairing Your Phone With The Right Charging Brick Is Important, Here's Why

You will sooner or later, or already, be in the situation when you need to use cable and charging brick that isn’t the ones bundled in the box, to charge your phone.

While it’s true the worldwide standards for USB-C and wireless charging have made it possible to charge your phone in that way, doing so repeatedly is advised against.

Ranking Chargers

One of the most important specs users need to care about on a charger is watts, which is how much power it can pushes into the device at once. Since they have larger batteries, tablets and laptops have chargers with a bigger number of watts.

The time the charger needs to fill your phone from 0% to 100% depends on how much power it can provide at once and how much energy the phone can take. For example, the new iPhone 12 can take up to 20W.

So if you use the 20W charger for iPhone 12, expect to fill up its battery four times faster than using the 5W counterpart.

The same explanation is true for laptops also. The new MacBook Pro can handle 10W of electricity, meaning the charging time is twice as fast as when using the 5W but can’t compete with the 20W.

If you want the fastest charging speed, you need to know exactly how many watts the handset can handle at once and pair it with a charger that can provide corresponding capacity.

Most phone makers give you just the charger inside the box with the phone. But when you buy from Apple, for example, you will have to arm yourself with the knowledge of what works with the iPhone 12 and what doesn’t.

Phone makers have different methods to offer fast charging ability. OnePlus, for example, makes 65W possible by dividing the battery into two and charge both of them at the same time.

What Charger Can I Use?

If your phone can be wirelessly charged, you can use almost any charger for it. Modern phones are smart so they can regulate the power to make sure that you don’t make it explodes by plugging it into a charger too powerful for it to handle.

However, beware of chargers that have been around for a few years or those which are too cheap as they may not adhere to the same safety standards as your handset.

We don’t mean to accuse all charger makers which offer budget-friendly merchandise of endangering their customers on purpose, but as am user, it’s safer to buy from reputable brands, even if their products are a bit more expensive.

What you should bear in mind is while it’s possible to pair new phones with new chargers, it doesn’t mean you can expect optimal efficiency or speed if you do so.

As we explained above, fast charging is where each company has its own standards and methods so you will have to use the charging brick and cable bundled in the box for the fastest speed possible.

It’s pretty much the same for wireless charging. While technically if your handset can be charged in this way, you can use just about anything with it. However, if the dock and the phone aren’t designed to work with each other, you may experience a slower charging speed than you expect.

The exception is the iPhone 12 and MagSafe. Since Apple uses a magnet to hold the pad in place, it has to pull some very neat engineering tricks to make wireless charging and magnet work in harmony with each other, using MagSafe with phones other than iPhone 12 lineup is advised against.

Apple said MagSafe can interfere with magnetic strips in badges, credit cards, key fobs, and passports so you should proceed with care around these objects.

The bottom line here is you don’t need to be too careful when using other people’s chargers with your phone, especially when they are new as modern hardware is designed to prepare for this kind of use.

However, for fast charging, sticking to the bundled accessories is necessary to achieve the speed the manufacturer promises.

Last but not least, MagSafe can’t be used on any other phone except for iPhone 12, despite some reports surfaced recently stating otherwise. If you want your handset to enjoy a long life, just don’t attempt to make Apple’s charging accessory to work on any phone other than the iPhone 12 lineup.

>>> Apple Launches MagSafe Wireless Charging Dock, Only Compatible With iPhone 12