How To: There's One Setting You Need to Turn On to Charge Your Phone's Battery Faster

There's One Setting You Need to Turn On to Charge Your Phone's Battery Faster

New technologies in current-generations smartphones allow for much faster charging—Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0, VOOC Flash Charge, and USB Type-C, for instance, can charge a phone up to 4 times faster than traditional methods. However, the majority of phones on the market still don't support these standards. So for the rest of us, I'll go over an easy tip that can charge any smartphone as much as 25% faster.

Enable Airplane Mode While You Charge

The secret to charging your smartphone up to 25% faster is simple—just enable Airplane Mode while you charge. This works because it turns off battery-draining connectivity radios and lets your phone focus on charging and charging alone.

You can enable Airplane Mode on iOS by swiping up from your home screen, then tapping the Airplane Mode icon in the Control Center. On Android, swipe down from the top of your screen and tap the Airplane Mode toggle to enable the feature.

Just don't forget to turn it back off when you're done.

(1) Enabling Airplane Mode on iOS, (2) Enabling Airplane Mode on Android

In case you're not already convinced, I ran a little experiment to prove this concept. In my testing, I found that normal charging took place at a rate of 0.733% per minute on my Nexus 6P, whereas the same device charged at a rate of 0.933% per minute with Airplane Mode enabled. All told, the device charged from 50% capacity up to 61% during a 15-minute window—but when I turned on Airplane Mode and tried again, it went from 50% up to 64% in that same time frame.

That may not seem like much of a difference at first glance, but it's just 15 minutes of charging. Extrapolate that data to a larger scale, and it paints a much different picture. If we were talking about 0% through 100% here, the phone could take 136 minutes to charge with all data services turned on. However, with Airplane Mode enabled, a 0-100% charge could only take 107 minutes—that's a whopping 27% faster.

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3 Comments

Correct me if I am wrong but I believe you may be mistaken about the iPhone charging rate. According to Apple http://www.apple.com/batteries/why-lithium-ion/

The battery charges in two stages. Thus the charge rate isn't linear as you suggest.

Although the charging rate may be faster with airplane mode on.

So for however long it takes to charge, you don't have a phone. Just a brick. Why not have a charger at your desk. Sit down, plug it in. Leave phone radios on

True. But if you're about to head out on a trip (or something like that) and you need a quick top off, this is an easy way to get more charge in less time.

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