Old iPhone Charger on Left / New, Super-Fast Charger on the Right
Mitch here!
Quick post today to share the single-greatest piece of technology I’ve purchased in the last year: a Fast iPhone Charger. It’s between $16 and $19 depending on the day, and it can charge a dead iPhone to half battery in just 30 minutes. Incredible!
And if you’re asking yourself, Mitch, I have a bunch of phone chargers piled all over my house. Why on Earth would I pay $19 for another one? What are you, a moron?! The answer is simple. Come on a little battery journey with me. Or just buy the charger and skip the journey. Up to you!
Your iPhone is essentially a big battery with a screen on it. That battery is filled with lithium-cobalt oxide that when charging, pops off lithium ions and sends them to the battery’s negative electrode until they’re needed. When you unplug your phone, those lithium ions move back in the other direction towards the positive electrode, churning off some the sweet electricity that keeps your Instagram feed scrolling all day.
Battery chargers have a simpler job. They need to shove the right amount of electricity across that lithium-cobalt electrolyte to optimize the lithium ion flow without overheating the battery and blowing up your phone. The rate at which the charger shoves electricity into the battery is called the wattage, and the greater the number of watts, the faster your phone will charge.
Until this year, Apple shipped every iPhone with a 5 watt charger which would typically charge a phone in an abysmal 3.5 hours. Who has 3.5 hours to wait while their phone charges? Apple, which is the most valuable company in the world, then decided to sell iPhones without a charger at all. Which is just confounding. To add to the confusion, Apple simultaneously created the best phone charger I’ve ever used and didn’t tell anyone about it. This 20 watt power adapter can charge a phone to 80 pecercent in an hour. It’s so fast that I just wrote a whole blog post on it. I bought five of them on the spot and threw all my other chargers away.
I suppose you could buy one of the dozens of generic 20 watt chargers on Amazon. Or you could get one of these cool magnetic Mag Safe charging packs that clamp onto your phone and charge it like it’s got a giant secondary battery humpback. Those are also options. But, you know, whatever.
Mitch, OUT!
