Xiaomi’s 200W charging has a major effect on battery degradation
TL; DR
- Xiaomi has announced that its 200W charging solution is draining the battery capacity significantly.
- Approximately two years of charge and discharge cycles cause the battery to drop to just over 80% capacity.
Xiaomi announced a 200W wired charge last month, which is a big step beyond the ultra-fast 120W solutions already available in some phones. The manufacturer says this solution is capable of charging a 4,000 mAh battery in just eight minutes, but it turns out to be expensive in the long run.
Xiaomi posted a Q&A on its Weibo account today and one of the questions was about the impact of 200W charging on battery health over time. It turns out that 800 charge and discharge cycles at 200 W lead to the battery being reduced to “over 80%” of its original capacity.
800 cycles is just over two years, which means that a phone with a 4,000 mAh battery will effectively have a 3,200 mAh battery (or slightly more) after two years of charging using this method. Meanwhile, a device with a 5,000 mAh battery will essentially have a ~ 4,000 mAh battery after two years of 200 W charging.
This is roughly comparable to the 125 W charging solution announced by Oppo last year. Oppo said at the time that 800 cycles of 125 W charging will reduce battery capacity to 80%. The Company noticed earlier that his already fast 65 W solution only reduced the battery capacity to 91%.
Read more: Charging habits to maximize battery life
For what it’s worth, Xiaomi claims that the Chinese regulatory standard for battery degradation is that after 400 cycles there should be 60% of the capacity left. But that seems like an absurdly low bar for smartphone battery health with people sticking to their devices longer than ever. And that standard would mean that a phone with a 4,000 mAh battery would be reduced to 2,400 mAh after about a year of charging. That’s barely enough for half a day, as modern phones offer 5G, high refresh rate screens, and other power-hungry features.
However, we hope that smartphone companies will wait to implement additional 120W to 200W charging solutions until they find a way to improve battery performance. Until then, today’s 40W, 55W, and 65W solutions will generally deliver high speeds without affecting battery health to the same extent.
