Here Is Why Mobile Phones End Up Charging Slowly

Why Phones Charge Slowly Hospital Patient Li-Ion Lithium Ion Li-Po

While battery life on cell phones improves with every new release, most of us still need to charge our phones at least once a day or so. This is fine for most people, but over time, many people will start to notice that their phones begin to charge slowly. This can be incredibly frustrating and can lead to your phone taking forever to charge or not fully recharging anymore. So why do our phones charge slowly?

Well, there are actually quite a bit of different reasons why the charging on our phones might not seem as speedy as it once was. Here are just a few of the potential culprits:

 

A Bad Charging Cable

Of course, a bad USB cable is one of the first places you should look if your phone is charging slowly. These cords get bent, tossed, around and stepped on, so it is no surprise they have relatively short lives. Lots can go wrong with these cables so if your phones charge slowly, a bad USB charging cable could be to blame. Also, mixing and matching cables and adapters can sometimes result in incompatible signalling, which can make phones charge slowly. When in doubt, stick with the official cable and adapter or with quality alternatives. If you need to replace cables, ones that are short and thicker often will yield you the best results, as research shows these can help with faster charging.

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RAVPower USB Cable Lightning iOS Android

 

Your Power Source Is Weak

Where you plug your phone in to charge it is one of the biggest indicators when it comes to how fast your device your charge. Many people think “charging is charging”, but that isn’t the case. Charging through a USB 2.0 port on your computer will only yield about .5 amps of energy output. So if you have only been using your laptop or car USB port (which is also slow) to charge your phones, you shouldn’t be surprised when your device charges slowly. A simple wall charger is likely the way to go. Thankfully you don’t have to settle for slow 1 amp charging with 2A or even 2.4A options for twice as fast recharge speeds.

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Your Phone is Physically Damaged

When you drop your phone or toss it around, you not only damage the visible outer layer of the device, but also all of the technology inside the phone as well. There is a chance that your USB port of the internal charging functionality has been damaged in some way, which is causing your phone to not charge correctly. If this is the case, you will likely need to take the phone in for repair as changing batteries, charging cables or power sources will not help.

RAVPower USB Cable Lightning iOS Android
 

The Battery Itself Could be the Actual Issue

However, the problem might not always be with the accessories you use or because of the damage to your phone. The problem could actually be the battery itself, most notably the age and wear and tear of your battery. Cell phones often use a lithium-ion battery and over time, the voltage and capacity of these batteries will begin to diminish. This will mean that not only will your phone die quicker than it did in the past, but also that it might take longer to charge due to the ions being weaker.

Slow Charging Battery Reasons
 
Unfortunately, this is just something that happens over time as lithium-ion batteries normally will only have a life-cycle of about 1000 cycles. As a result, if you charge your phone once a day, you will only have get about three years or so out of any battery before it starts to exhibit issues such as slower charging or quicker discharging.

Have you found any cool tips to prolong battery life in your mobile phone? If so, share your secrets in the comments!

23 Replies to “Here Is Why Mobile Phones End Up Charging Slowly

  1. I have noticed with my 3-years old tablet that reaching certain level of discharging it turns off unexpectedly. Ex: discharging normal pace from 100% to 40% and then it turns off and when I try to turn it back on is showing 0%. Why that happens?

    Thanks

    1. No. The amperage output of any modern power strip is at least 15 amps @ 120 VAC which is ridiculously high when it comes to charging a phone at a tiny 10 watts or so.

  2. I don’t even plug my charger into a wall outlet that has something plugged into the other socket. I let it be all by itself in that wall outlet.

    1. It makes no difference unless the outlet is absolutely massively overloaded. The lowest powered circuit in any modern building is now 15 amps at 120 VAC for around 1800 watts and mobile phone chargers are drawing maybe 2 amps and 5 Volts for 10 watts of consumption. 10 watts is nothing on a 15 amp 120 VAC circuit.

  3. You forgot to mention instances where Manufacturers push software to neuter the charge rate, and cap the full upper limit of what the circuitry in the phone will charge the Battery to! Well played Apple! Secretly piss off your customers in an effort to make them upgrade!

    1. Mine always charged fast till the most recent IOS update. Now it takes forever to charge and is down to 10% in a couple hours. Sometimes only 30 minutes after charging! So I truly think Apple did it!!

  4. The phone is a new one which hasn’t use up to 2 months and then recently it started charging slowly at first I thought it was the charger but the same charger is charging other phone normally

  5. Very nice article topic and well explained also many of people mostly facing one more problem while charging, they got charger cables breaking can you please write one blog to solve this problem. Thanks Indeed.

  6. I have a meizu m2 note and a problem with charging the battery. Only when it is turned off full but very slowly too slow. I use the charger 5v / 2A, I am very concerned about this, and the battery is not removed.

    Can you tell me which exact charger I need to use and usb cable because I do not have the original.

    What is the battery specification?

    1. Hi Dejan

      Thanks for getting in touch!

      The original charger of Meizu M2 is 5 V/1A, and the mobile phone only supports 5 V/1A charging. There is no special requirement for the data cable and charger; even if you charge the Meizu M2 with 5 V/2A or 5 V/2.4A chargers you will only reach 5 V/1A charging current. Therefore, it will appear to be slow charging even if you’re using a fast charger!

      Hope that helps.

  7. just read this post, But my question is still not answered. If I use any charger other that the Samsung supplied or purchased the charging time is much longer. On the Samsung Charger it says 2 hour on a non Samsung it tells me 5 hours. The same non Samsung charger charges my other android phone in 2 hours. Does Samsung, like cable providers, throttle the power coming into the phone on te phone.

  8. My phone is charging slowly and I have tried it on another phone but it is charging the other faster, so how can I solve this issue?

  9. I purchased a Beeste 50000M Power Notebook Bank charger that came with 5,9,12,16, and 24 volt recharge options. What should I set the voltage at to recharge my Android (Huawei) phone?

  10. This is a brilliant article. For tips to prolong battery life, Chargie helps. It caps charging to a preset % so that the battery doesn’t suffer any harm even if it is left plugged overnight.

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